[ad. med.L. transcendentia, f. L. transcendent-em TRANSCENDENT: see -ENCE. Cf. F. transcendance (18th c.).]
1. The action or fact of transcending, surmounting, or rising above; † ascent, elevation (obs.); excelling, surpassing; also, the condition or quality of being transcendent, surpassing eminence or excellence: = TRANSCENDENCY.
1601. Shaks., All’s Well, II. iii. 40. In a most weake—… And debile minister, great power, great transcendence.
1644. Digby, Nat. Soul, x. § 7. There is a transcendence from science to science.
1678. Lively Oracles, II. xix. God, in whom all those qualifications are united, and that in their utmost transcendences.
1744. Harris, Three Treat., III. II. (1765), 215. That very Transcendence is an Argument on its behalf.
1802. Anna Seward, Lett. (1811), VI. 27. When we reflect that he had been excelled in every separate order of verse, justice may scruple the imputed transcendence.
1876. T. S. Egan, trans. Heine’s Atta Troll, etc., 43. A temple, whose transcendence Indicates the Almighty’s glory.
1907. Illingworth, Doctr. Trinity, xi. 226. We expect to see Divine action manifested through the operation of general laws, and not through their occasional transcendence.
b. spec. Of the Deity: The attribute of being above and independent of the universe; distinguished from immanence (see IMMANENT 1).
1848. R. I. Wilberforce, Doctr. Incarnation, III. (1852), 32. Thai Deistic theory of Transcendence, which supposes that the qualities of matter having been bestowed upon it by its Maker, everything has been left to go on by the impulse which was originally bestowed.
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), I. 214. Not always … able to embrace fully and together these two conceptions of transcendence and of immanence.
1896. Chicago Advance, 16 April, 567/2. We have been accustomed to believe that nature reveals God in his immanence, but that Christ reveals God in his transcendence.
1907. Illingworth, Doctr. Trinity, x. 197. Divine immanence and divine transcendence are not mutually exclusive, but essentially correlative conceptions.
† 2. Elevation or extension beyond ordinary limits; exaggeration, hyperbole. Obs. rare.
1625. Bacon, Ess., Adversitie (Arb.), 504. This would have done better in Poesy; where Transcendences are more allowed.
1645. Milton, Tetrach., Wks. 1851, IV. 234. Why … should they be such crabbed masorites of the Letter, as not to mollifie a transcendence of literal rigidity?
3. Math. The fact of being transcendental: see TRANSCENDENTAL 4.
1902. Encycl. Brit., XXXI. 287/2. Lindemann by a similar process proved the transcendence of π.
