 Margaret Fuller retained the dualistic metaphysics of Channing rather than the pure idealism of Emerson and her other transcendentalist friends. But she followed the transcendentalist approach to the distinction between “Reason” and “Understanding”. What we normally regard as perception and logical thinking they classified as “Understanding”. “Reason” Fuller and others saw as divinely inspired insight, peculiar to each individual and much more important for true religion. “Understanding” carried us through the mundane, practical material world. “Reason” was the faculty through which a wise person conducted the Platonic Quest to go beyond the material in search of the ideal. Both Channing and Emerson wanted to recreate in the modern world the role that had been played by the New England Puritan minister as inspirational intellectual, spiritual, and moral leader. Fuller was determined to open this role to women. Even while embracing nineteenth-century Romanticism, she sought to implement the Enlightenment ideal of natural rights. In this and other ways, she stands out to us as the most modern of the New England transcendentalists. 