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The American Scholar (1838) By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882), known professionally as Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay "Nature." Following this groundbreaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence."
30 pages, Paperback
First published August 31, 1837
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About the author
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3,412 books5,358 followersRalph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an "Over-Soul" or "Form of Good," ideas which were considered highly heretical. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. Margaret Fuller became one of his "disciples," as did Henry David Thoreau.
The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.
The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.
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February 12, 2020
Emerson is now a classic author, read by at least six generations of American high school students. It is easy to see him as a stuffy Boston Brahmin, pontificating his Platonic and Vedantic insights from a rarefied spiritual plane.
But that would be a mistake, an unjust caricature. When Emerson, at the age of thirty-four, burst forth on the American academic scene with a lecture to Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society (later called “The American Scholar”), he spoke as a man acquainted with adversity, aware of the challenges and possibilities America faced in the tumultuous world of 1837.
His father the minister having died when he was seven, Emerson was raised by his mother and aunt; his mother took in boarders to support a family never far from poverty. Emerson entered Harvard at the age of fourteen—not unusual for the time—with a small scholarship, and worked his way through college as an usher, a waiter, a tutor, an errand boy (to the president of the college), and—during the summer vacation—as a teacher at his uncle Sam’s school. After he graduating at eighteen, he started his own school, located in the family home.
Although he continued to teach, he suffered from ill health, particularly from tuberculosis. For a time he journeyed to the Southern United States, seeking a healthier climate, and his health improved. (He also acquired there a lifelong hatred of slavery.) Tuberculosis continued to plague him in other ways, however: two of his younger brothers, and his beloved first wife, died of the disease before Emerson had reached the age of thirty-four.
By 1827 he had completed divinity school and become a minister, but his years of independent reading and thinking had made him unorthodox in his theology (even for a 19th century Unitarian!) and revolutionary in his political opinions. His religious doubts intensified with his wife's death, and he found himself unable to celebrate communion. He decided to part company with the ministry, and—having inherited a living from his wife's estate—he chose to become a writer and lecturer instead. He still preached, but now he could preach the gospel according to Emerson.
In “The American Scholar,” Emerson speaks to the American intellectual during a time of unrest and unease. Half a century after the Constitutional Convention, the United States was no longer an exciting revolutionary experiment, but an English-speaking nation still dominated by British culture, divided by “the peculiar institution” of slavery, and touched by new ethnic unrest. It was a time of financial uncertainty too: unemployment was at record levels, and the “the panic of 1837” had precipitated a banking crisis. (When Emerson delivered his lecture at the end of August, the banks had been refusing to redeem paper money for “specie”—gold and silver—for the last two months, and would continue to do so for seven months to come.) Recently, ethnic conflict had erupted in Emerson’s own city of Boston, when a three-hour riot between native Protestants and immigrant Catholics—precipitated (it is said) by a clash between speeding Yankee firemen and a slow-moving Irish funeral procession—had to be put down by the militia. In addition, the United States had just traded a strong president (Jackson) for a weak one (Van Buren), and was beginning to question what allegiances, what characteristics, defined the changing American identity.
Emerson was a man of hope, not of fear, and he provided his audience with an inspiring answer. Just as the hand “is divided into fingers,” so every individual man is a part of the greater entity called “mankind.” We must not lose ourselves in our everyday activities, but remember we are part of the whole. We must learn from the past and its great writers (including of course the British ones), but we should never become the servant of books or the slave of other men’s ideas. Each of us must not be a mere thinker, or (worse) the parrot of other men thinking, but instead must strive to be “man thinking”: if we see the world clearly, just as it appears to us, unswayed by popular fads, we--the fingers of the hand of humankind--will come to see it as part of all humanity:
The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetich of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his own time,—happy enough if he can satisfy himself alone that this day he has seen something truly. Success treads on every right step. For the instinct is sure that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in cities vast find true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses, until he finds that he is the complement of his hearers;—that they drink his words because he fulfills for them their own nature; the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public and universally true. The people delight in it; the better part of every man feels—This is my music; this is myself.
June 28, 2009
This is a speech given by Emerson in 1837 and basically outlines what a true "American" scholar should be. The basic idea is that rather than becaming an intellectual, pedantic, bookworm, the American scholar should be one who goes to nature and books for inspiration and then creates--so rather than living by the light of others or becoming a "parrot of other man's thinking" the true scholar delves into his own soul to discover truth and upon discovering it has a duty to act and share what he discover with the world. This has completely changed the way I think about learning and improving myself. Rather than just adding knowledge, I should read to be inspired and then spending more time in creative thought, writing, and other activities that strengthen my soul and character. In the end, it made me ashamed for every calling myself a bookworm!
Free link to the entire speech:
http://www.emersoncentral.com/amschol...
A few favorite quotes:
Each age, it is found, must write its own books...the books of an older period will not fit this.
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. They are for nothing but to inspire.
Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.
Character is higher than intellect.
...in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds.
Free link to the entire speech:
http://www.emersoncentral.com/amschol...
A few favorite quotes:
Each age, it is found, must write its own books...the books of an older period will not fit this.
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. They are for nothing but to inspire.
Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.
Character is higher than intellect.
...in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds.
May 10, 2010
One of my favorite new quotes (ever):
"To the young mind, every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things, and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand ... But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary motion. The chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout matter; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts." - The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
"To the young mind, every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things, and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand ... But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary motion. The chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout matter; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts." - The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
November 27, 2017
I had my great moments (like how come I never thought of this: it is still relevant today) to blah it's alright.
August 27, 2018
I think I can make a rare generalization here; anyone who goes through kindergarten to 12th grade education (which is the last year of secondary school before university, for my non-U.S. friends) in the U.S. will have had to read this essay and Self-Reliance. I have read Emerson in school on multiple occasions and have recently re-visited him. The reason why I have waited so long to add him to Goodreads is because he is, for all intents, BORING!
I do not mean he is not revolutionary or a controversial figure who you can have a good conversation about. Emerson's ideas were and still are revolutionary in a lot of ways; the way he went about communicating his ideas was very problematic. It is horrifyingly dry prose that never fails to make me start daydreaming--and that is a shame because what he is talking about is very important and inspiring. His views launched the American Transcendentalist movement and without him we would not have people like Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, or Emily Dickinson. Given that, those three were infinitely better at communicating transcendentalism than Emerson in my opinion. With all that said, let's talk about the essay.
This essay was delivered at Harvard and it was meant as a rallying cry to young American...scholars and academic-types to forge their own views and scholarly pursuits independent of Europe. He puts it down to the difference between one who invents and sells something and one who merely works in a factory reproducing somebody else's work to be sold. The American scholar must be the inventor and that means throwing out the traditions of the "Old World" in favor of creating the "New."
Now the prime way of doing this is to look to yourself and the natural world around you (i.e. in this case the American frontier or just America). Transcendentalism was itself just the American manifestation of the European Romantic movement (never-mind the existence of Edgar Allan Poe) so there is your irony. He does not advocate abandoning the way you pursue knowledge like book-reading and etc. a la Rousseau, but suggest that you add the glory of nature to your learning style:
I do not mean he is not revolutionary or a controversial figure who you can have a good conversation about. Emerson's ideas were and still are revolutionary in a lot of ways; the way he went about communicating his ideas was very problematic. It is horrifyingly dry prose that never fails to make me start daydreaming--and that is a shame because what he is talking about is very important and inspiring. His views launched the American Transcendentalist movement and without him we would not have people like Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, or Emily Dickinson. Given that, those three were infinitely better at communicating transcendentalism than Emerson in my opinion. With all that said, let's talk about the essay.
This essay was delivered at Harvard and it was meant as a rallying cry to young American...scholars and academic-types to forge their own views and scholarly pursuits independent of Europe. He puts it down to the difference between one who invents and sells something and one who merely works in a factory reproducing somebody else's work to be sold. The American scholar must be the inventor and that means throwing out the traditions of the "Old World" in favor of creating the "New."
Now the prime way of doing this is to look to yourself and the natural world around you (i.e. in this case the American frontier or just America). Transcendentalism was itself just the American manifestation of the European Romantic movement (never-mind the existence of Edgar Allan Poe) so there is your irony. He does not advocate abandoning the way you pursue knowledge like book-reading and etc. a la Rousseau, but suggest that you add the glory of nature to your learning style:
"The world, — this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct, that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its fear; I dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding life."This was very revolutionary stuff in ante-bellum America and you still find these ideas having an impact on undergraduates before student-loan debts pull them back to Earth. I just wish he could have kept his essays on a more charismatic, interesting tone because as much as I have read historians and philosophers who many consider extremely dull, something about how Emerson writes prose just does not move me like I know it should. Be that as it may, if you want to see the foundation of American exceptionalism in academia, this essay is ground-zero for me.
"It is the raw material out of which the intellect moulds her splendid products. A strange process too, this, by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all hours."
March 2, 2023
started reading this for class with medium expectations and then almost ascended from the prose
April 7, 2017
Ďalšia vec na literatúru. Nebol oto zlém malo to dobré myšlienky, ale rozhodne to nie je niečo, čo by som čítala každý deň...
August 26, 2019
Actual Rating: 3 Stars
RTC
RTC
September 25, 2022
overall, interesting ideas. not sure how much i believe modern day school systems have followed his ideas, but nonetheless it contained interesting ideas. i don’t think i am smart enough to properly comprehend this though. it was so hard for me to understand.
2.5/5
2.5/5
October 3, 2022
“The American Scholar” has been called our literary declaration of independence, but does it deserve the equivalent educational accoutrements afforded our historic pronouncement of 1776?
Before I render my opinion, I must say that my edition (ISBN 9780343858292) gets FIVE BIG STARS for the footnotes. Wow, what a treasure! They are full of backstory and bring clarity to words lost to us today. Additionally, the fifteen-page introduction that precedes The American Scholar essay is a fine overview, thorough in its brevity.
About the author:
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) was poet, essayist, and philosopher. Born in Boston, Emerson entered Harvard at 14. He graduated Harvard, and later Cambridge Divinity School, to become a Unitarian minister. By thirty, Emerson had left the ministry to devote his life to poetry, writing, and lecturing.
What is his stature among poets, essayists, and philosophers. Opinions vary. As to respect, one said, “The judgments formed of him are as various as the habits of thought in the critics.” 13
The book in a sentence (or two):
The master of the essay, this edition adds the works “Self-Reliance” and “Compensation” to the Emerson Classic, “The American Scholar.” Emerson was just 35 when he delivered this essay before the Harvard chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a society composed of 25 men (yes, male only in 1837) from each graduating class. (21) This essay has won great acclaim as the American literary declaration of independence.
My quick take on The American Scholar
There is much to appreciate in the Emerson treatise. Most particularly, Emerson urges people to think for themselves, rather than being slaves to the thoughts of others.
Overview and Analysis::
Emerson highlights the influence of Nature, the Past, and Action.
Nature causes one to dig deep. “‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study nature,’ become at last one maxim.”
The Past provides helpful learning, but one must work not become a slave to the thoughts of others.
Action. In short, scholarship and the ivory tower were NOT made for each other. Yes indeed! I appreciated these words:
I appreciate this but Emerson goes too far in his reliance on the self. Living life “under the sun” as the writer of Ecclesiastes notes, never satisfies and always ends in vanity. One must look past man to God who becomes to us wisdom and righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30).
Emerson difficulties with Christianity are well-documented. A believer in God (I think), he seems most at home in nature, but as the introduction noted so well:
Emerson's devotion to the individual self is IMO a proud pile of poppycock that should be poop-scooped off Harvard yard, deposited in a doggie bag, and tossed in the trash. Such soaring rhetoric, built on a foundation of marshmallows:
Emerson follows suit in Self-Reliance: “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.” And “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashed across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages” (49). Later he writes, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature . . . the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.”
Emerson and his self-relying ilk have not given us the moon they promised, but they have birthed a movement of the individualized self as the measure of all and the arbitrator of all. Look at the flimsy foundation propping up gender fluid preadolescent teens demanding hormone therapy without affirmation of doctor or parent, and there you will find Emerson, sweating profusely to keep aloft such confident assertions.
My Takeaways:
1. Do the hard work to read and re-read: About reading Emerson, the introductory commentator wisely said, It is not always easy to understand Emerson; his sentences are full of hidden meaning which cannot be detected at a glance; they must be read and re-read to perceive the full drift of the thought; but the thought in its fullness well repays us for the trouble. 15 OMW
2. Knowledge puffs up: Emerson feels like Arrogance with pen in hand. “Discontent is the want of self-reliance.” “Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man” (72), “All men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect” (73), “That a true man belongs to no other time and place, but is the center of things” (60) is philosophical bad math. Two “true men” who differ cannot both be right or the center of things except in the center of their own collapsing universes.
The author piqued my curiosity about these authors and books:
1. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Novum Organum (New Method)
2. William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Merchant of Venice and Hamlet
3. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Principia
4. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74), The Vicar of Wakefield.
5. Edmund Burke (1729-97), "Speech on American Conciliation" and Reflections on the French Revolution
Words to ponder:
1. On reading and not thinking: Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 27
2. On reading and writing: One must be an inventor to read well. As the [Spanish] proverb says, “He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies.” When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. 29
3. On study AND action: Time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives.
4. On combining scholarly thinking with action: Time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives. 34
5. On thinking: Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable o the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. 36
6. On focused work: The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aim. . . . This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. 39, 42
Conclusion:
“The American Scholar” has been called our literary declaration of independence, but does it deserve the equivalent educational accoutrements afforded our historic pronouncement of 1776? Not to me. Emerson’s breadth of knowledge seems as wide as the mouth of the Amazon. At times he is brilliant, but his confidence, a shimmering rambling rhetoric, is anchored to an outsized self that declares “The man is all” (“Compensation” 104). On one hand he says, “A great man is always willing to be little” (Compensation, 102), but there is little “little” in one who declares "the man is all" and boasts of “the omnipotence of the will” (Compensation, 86).
Reading Emerson, I would play Festus to his loquacious monologues and shout: “You are out of your mind . . . . Your great learning is driving you insane.” Emerson does shine in his insight at times. In Compensation he writes, “There is a crack in everything God has made.” (95) True, but the crack is man-made (Romans 3:23), and the healing only comes when the self-reliant man becomes a man dependent on God and his mediator Christ (John 3:16).
Bibliographical Data:
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1893. The American Scholar, Self-Reliance, Compensation. New York: American Book Company. Reprinted by Franklin Classics. ISBN 9780343858292
Additional contextual insights from the brief introduction to The American Scholar in the Audible recording (speech only).
Before I render my opinion, I must say that my edition (ISBN 9780343858292) gets FIVE BIG STARS for the footnotes. Wow, what a treasure! They are full of backstory and bring clarity to words lost to us today. Additionally, the fifteen-page introduction that precedes The American Scholar essay is a fine overview, thorough in its brevity.
About the author:
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) was poet, essayist, and philosopher. Born in Boston, Emerson entered Harvard at 14. He graduated Harvard, and later Cambridge Divinity School, to become a Unitarian minister. By thirty, Emerson had left the ministry to devote his life to poetry, writing, and lecturing.
What is his stature among poets, essayists, and philosophers. Opinions vary. As to respect, one said, “The judgments formed of him are as various as the habits of thought in the critics.” 13
The book in a sentence (or two):
The master of the essay, this edition adds the works “Self-Reliance” and “Compensation” to the Emerson Classic, “The American Scholar.” Emerson was just 35 when he delivered this essay before the Harvard chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a society composed of 25 men (yes, male only in 1837) from each graduating class. (21) This essay has won great acclaim as the American literary declaration of independence.
My quick take on The American Scholar
There is much to appreciate in the Emerson treatise. Most particularly, Emerson urges people to think for themselves, rather than being slaves to the thoughts of others.
Overview and Analysis::
Emerson highlights the influence of Nature, the Past, and Action.
Nature causes one to dig deep. “‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study nature,’ become at last one maxim.”
The Past provides helpful learning, but one must work not become a slave to the thoughts of others.
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.”Yes, receive the thoughts of others, but not without taking time for quiet reflection and pushback. “Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius of overinfluence.” “Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.” These are good words. Finally, Emerson discusses action.
Action. In short, scholarship and the ivory tower were NOT made for each other. Yes indeed! I appreciated these words:
So much only of life as I know by experience . . . . I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power” (31), “Life is our dictionary” (32), “Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary” (33), and “Time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives” (34).Emerson promotes scholarly work as that which “plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation” (35). As one will see further on, it seems to me that Emerson places undue confidence in man in general and scholarly man in particular. That said, he is advocating thinking—doing the hard work of living, observing, and cataloging even though that cake takes a long time to bake.
I appreciate this but Emerson goes too far in his reliance on the self. Living life “under the sun” as the writer of Ecclesiastes notes, never satisfies and always ends in vanity. One must look past man to God who becomes to us wisdom and righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30).
Emerson difficulties with Christianity are well-documented. A believer in God (I think), he seems most at home in nature, but as the introduction noted so well:
It is not always easy to understand Emerson; his sentences are full of hidden meaning which cannot be detected at a glance; they must be read and re-read to perceive the full drift of the thought; but the through in its fullness will repays us for the trouble. 15As the introduction declares, “He is the champion of mental freedom, and continually urges others to free themselves from the fetters of conventionality” (17). There is some wisdom here, but Emerson seems to travel the path of the morning star, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will rise my throne above the stars of God . . . I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14 NIV).
Emerson's devotion to the individual self is IMO a proud pile of poppycock that should be poop-scooped off Harvard yard, deposited in a doggie bag, and tossed in the trash. Such soaring rhetoric, built on a foundation of marshmallows:
The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all. . . . this confidence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar. . . . and thousands of young men as hopeful now . . . do not see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitable on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.Really? Can someone tell that to the Democratic and Republican parties?
Emerson follows suit in Self-Reliance: “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.” And “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashed across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages” (49). Later he writes, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature . . . the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.”
Emerson and his self-relying ilk have not given us the moon they promised, but they have birthed a movement of the individualized self as the measure of all and the arbitrator of all. Look at the flimsy foundation propping up gender fluid preadolescent teens demanding hormone therapy without affirmation of doctor or parent, and there you will find Emerson, sweating profusely to keep aloft such confident assertions.
My Takeaways:
1. Do the hard work to read and re-read: About reading Emerson, the introductory commentator wisely said, It is not always easy to understand Emerson; his sentences are full of hidden meaning which cannot be detected at a glance; they must be read and re-read to perceive the full drift of the thought; but the thought in its fullness well repays us for the trouble. 15 OMW
2. Knowledge puffs up: Emerson feels like Arrogance with pen in hand. “Discontent is the want of self-reliance.” “Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man” (72), “All men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect” (73), “That a true man belongs to no other time and place, but is the center of things” (60) is philosophical bad math. Two “true men” who differ cannot both be right or the center of things except in the center of their own collapsing universes.
The author piqued my curiosity about these authors and books:
1. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Novum Organum (New Method)
2. William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Merchant of Venice and Hamlet
3. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Principia
4. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74), The Vicar of Wakefield.
5. Edmund Burke (1729-97), "Speech on American Conciliation" and Reflections on the French Revolution
Words to ponder:
1. On reading and not thinking: Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 27
2. On reading and writing: One must be an inventor to read well. As the [Spanish] proverb says, “He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies.” When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. 29
3. On study AND action: Time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives.
4. On combining scholarly thinking with action: Time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives. 34
5. On thinking: Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable o the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. 36
6. On focused work: The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aim. . . . This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. 39, 42
Conclusion:
“The American Scholar” has been called our literary declaration of independence, but does it deserve the equivalent educational accoutrements afforded our historic pronouncement of 1776? Not to me. Emerson’s breadth of knowledge seems as wide as the mouth of the Amazon. At times he is brilliant, but his confidence, a shimmering rambling rhetoric, is anchored to an outsized self that declares “The man is all” (“Compensation” 104). On one hand he says, “A great man is always willing to be little” (Compensation, 102), but there is little “little” in one who declares "the man is all" and boasts of “the omnipotence of the will” (Compensation, 86).
Reading Emerson, I would play Festus to his loquacious monologues and shout: “You are out of your mind . . . . Your great learning is driving you insane.” Emerson does shine in his insight at times. In Compensation he writes, “There is a crack in everything God has made.” (95) True, but the crack is man-made (Romans 3:23), and the healing only comes when the self-reliant man becomes a man dependent on God and his mediator Christ (John 3:16).
Bibliographical Data:
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1893. The American Scholar, Self-Reliance, Compensation. New York: American Book Company. Reprinted by Franklin Classics. ISBN 9780343858292
Additional contextual insights from the brief introduction to The American Scholar in the Audible recording (speech only).
October 4, 2024
read for my american lit class. emerson is a weird fucking guy. this is what happens when his rich wife dies and he gets bored
December 23, 2018
My initial thoughts are that Emerson is saying we must think as individuals, and if we do that right, we will think as a superior group overall. Typically, the thoughts of a collective are regarded negatively as collective implies the reliance on the ancients or the leading figures of the day. Emerson warns against following the paths of several categories of these people, from the bookworm who speaks of the tales and proclaims the ideals of others but not his own, to those who act without thought of why they act. Instead, we must identify patterns ourselves and seek new experiences to discern our own creative thoughts.
September 22, 2023
I had to read this for class and I was nervous because I because everyone was warning me how boring Emerson is. I guess there’s a reason I’m going to be Lit. teacher because I found this essay amazing. I couldn’t put it down and it really gave me a new perspective on life. Emerson put his soul into this essay and I appreciate his colorful analogies and his expression of vulnerability regarding his opinions. Not for everyone but I encourage everyone to give it a try, you may learn something new or it may ignite something new in you!
October 27, 2023
This posed some interesting ideas but, stylistically, it didn’t make for very interesting reading. I found the frequent listing of inspirational intellectuals a bit irksome and some of the phrasing was overly wordy. However the rhetoric used presented the ideas in a fairly convincing light and I definitely feel like I have more of a grasp of the transcendentalist movement after reading this.
May 6, 2023
Read for ENG 445: American Lit 1820-1870
July 29, 2023
I wish my prose was this good.
September 8, 2024
This is going to be the next big thing
September 19, 2024
An excellent starting point to Emerson, though maybe not the most engaging at first. Flowery and interesting prose, and ideology still valuable two-hundred years later.
July 31, 2024
What makes up a brilliant essay? Well, innumerable things if you ask me. Of all genres of creative art, save Poetry, I guess Essays haunt me the most. My students find me uncanny for my choice. My peers abuse me.
I myself have been a sucker for Bacon. I drool over his style. I have singlehandedly been the Reviewer Prime of so many of his Essays on Goodreads.
However, I love Goodreads for the singular reason that it chooses to ignore me completely. I have almost no followers, and I am not an Opinion Maker here. Hence, I can keep my opinions very silently and move ahead to the next text.
Now coming back to Bacon, I recollect a much-quoted portion from ‘The Two-Book Fallacy’.
Good old Francis says: “God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.”
--- For me, the Prime Creation is the Essay.
I have wanted to review this essay for ages. And now I am reviewing it.
What is the central thought here?
Every common biography of the man would tell you that Emerson extracted himself from the ministry for a diversity of reasons. One of these was the problem of action versus contemplation.
Now, fascinatingly, as he withdrew, he scrutinised various types of heroes like the Man of Genius, the Seer, the Contemplative Man, the Student, the Transcendentalist, and the Scholar.
Henry James thought by scholar, Emerson meant merely the ‘cultivated man’, the man who has had a liberal education. But this is not true.
Emerson's TRUE HERO was the scholar, and the true vocation is that of the scholar. In trying to comprehend and construe this vocation, Emerson faces the tensions arising from a need to gratify the impulses of his youth, to meet the humanitarian demand, to direct his own inclination and to grasp and follow the ethical ideals of English Romanticism.
The result is an ideal for contemplation. The scholar is the Genius and also the inheritor of the New England Clergyman's values. But these two are not compatible. In trying to bring them together, he was forced to over-emphasize self-reliance.
Emerson's scholar has character which is a confident acceptance of the idea that the Universe is perfectly governed by God.
Character also involves honour, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance which arise from the soul's "absolute command of its desires." This would make all action unreal. Here is an ideal of indifference.
Emerson held that God "has given to each his calling in his ruling love...has adapted the brain and the body of men to the work that is to be done in the world." We must allow those who "have a contemplative turn, and voluntarily seek solitude and converse with themselves."
The task of the scholar is to organize the facts, and to find out the unworldly laws that regulate them. He is related to the man of genius. He is not active like the practical man. But he does influence his associates through the cataleptic radiation of his goodness. He is in a state of "virtual hostility" to society.
He resists material wealth and greediness. He understands that the world is an appearance, and he grasps absolute truth through contemplation.
The special attribute of the ‘Contemplative Man’ is character. But Emerson does not want the scholar to appear as a recluse, or as a coward.
Manual labour is said to enrich his vocabulary.
This is described as "pearls and rubies to (his) discourse."
The end proposed is literary. The scholar enters the world only to make the inarticulate thought "vocal with speech" More positively we are told that if the scholar turns towards humanitarian reform, he is likely to lose his self-reliance because of the tyranny of "the popular judgments and modes of action."
So the thoughtful man has to turn his attention toward the perspective of (his) own infinite life." He must explore and develop his own integrity. The scholar begins to find out for he can convert the world. And between inactive meditation and active reform, he chooses the former, though he claims the virtues of the latter.
The intellectual domination of Europe does interfere with the scholar’s integrity. This has led Emerson to emphasize the nationalistic aspect. At the same time, he has to high against materialism, the tyranny of the past, and the voice of the multitude.
Emerson himself remarked that "the path which the hero travels alone is the highway of health and benefit to mankind."
The scholar is more like Carlyle's Hero. He is a priest-king, a poet, a man of letters. He is the Transcendentalist who, as Emerson noted, is the heir of Puritanism. Then we have "scholars out of the church," out of the society.
As Thoreau put it, "the society which I was made for is not here." The scholar's way is not the "ease and plea- sure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society." He must take up "the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed." This is a remarkable task. It is not astonishing that one of his hearers called the address- "Our Yankee Version of a Lecture by Abelard." Here is a plea for the young scholar to ascend his proper intellectual throne with the help of reason. The scholar must be careful about the understanding which often corrupts reason. In other words, this is a plea for mental independence.
Emerson had almost a mystical faith in America. The new world came into being as a reaction to the institutions of the old world and the new world must have a new culture emerging spontaneously from the land.
America then becomes the symbol of freedom. Every American will have to be guided by the spirit: "A nation of men will for the first time exists because each believes him. self-inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men."
The scholar has a powerful eye with which he can achieve synthesis and relatedness. Emerson felt that America needs a "general education of the " eye. He wanted telescopes placed on every street corner so that one can always see the stars which take us beyond the horizon.
The American scholar who is "the world's eye," must become an astronomer who could feel, 'the grandeur of the impression the stars and heavenly bodies make on us. Here is the contrast between observation and vision. The scholar has the awareness of the value of vision, of "the inextinguishableness of the imagination." As he penetrates space, he recaptures the primal wonder which is the first affirmation of transcendental experience.
Here we have the idea of humanity as the "greater It idler the distinguishes came from Swedenborg. With the help of this idea he part men from whole men. Those who treat their careers as a mean of making a living are part men. Whole men are representative men who treat their activities as service to humanity. Then a farmer can be a whole man if he gathers food for humanity. The scholar sums the intellect of mankind in himself; and he thinks for the best interest of humanity.
"The American Scholar" has a consistent tone and the argument is developed systematically. This is because from the beginning we have the dominant organic metaphor. The essay depends on the concept of "One Man" which is the social body of humanity. As against this we have a society "in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man." Mechanical specialization has destroyed the organic completeness of manhood and of the individual.
In this essay Emerson emphasizes change, progression, and originality. Instead of merely absorbing the ideas of others, the scholar must try to create his own ideas. He must publish the living, contemporary truth. The object of knowledge is constantly growing, and the scholar "shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator." The world has a unity and Man Thinking must understand it and live in harmony with the movement towards this unity.
The essay begins with the concept of undivided man and proceeds to define the scholar as Man Thinking. Here Emerson explores the creative soul in man. The strong soul, he says, finds opportunities for expression in actual living. Then the emphasis falls really on the man, not so much on the scholar.
The essay was constructed on the lines of a classical oration. It has its exordium, argument and peroration. First he shares the importance of the theme chosen. Man is greater than any of his functions; and he should, therefore, remember that he is first a man and then a scholar or a priest or any other. The function a person has, cannot be allowed to destroy the individual's nature, to destroy the functionary. Thus he states: "thinking is the function, living is the functionary." The scholar must be Man Thinking, not simply a thinker.
The three forces that shape a man into a scholar are nature, the mind of the past, and active participation in life.
Man and nature have a correspondence. There is an affinity between them. Man seeks to systematize and unify; and so he explores the laws governing facts. Here the scholar is a scientist who observes and classifies and who speculates on the relations between things.
The perception of relation is an ingenious and spontaneous act. Thus the "schoolboy, under the bending dome of day" has an intuitive apprehension that the laws of nature are also those of his soul. Nature and his soul appear as the manifestations of the same universal soul.
They arise from the same root and are related like leaf and flower, like the seal and its impression. If he learns of the one, he will know the other. Thus arises the command "know thyself" which is identical with "Study Nature".
The scholar is prejudiced by the mind of the past in so far as it is embodied in the great classics. He is not to be crushed by this tradition. Books can only inspire him and renew his own creativity. The scholar must "read God directly," live life and feel life. Reading must be followed by "periods of solitude, inquest and self-recovery." This is necessary because "genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence." Books have an important service during "the intervals of darkness" when we have to "repair to the lamps which were kindled" in the past. Just as the unproductive fig tree may be inspired by the example of the productive one, so can a person by the example of the great man. The scholar must have creative reading.
Each man is similar to the other. But he is something "new in nature," and he must arrive at the old conclusions by himself. All minds are self-sufficient parts of the Universal Mind which is growing or expanding.
This leads Emerson to speak next of the influence of the life of action; the "scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again."
The scholar must receive the world into himself. Experience is the means and the measure of knowledge. One knows only so much of himself as he knows of life. Experience offers the "raw material out of which the intellect moulds her splendid products."
Life is our source of experience and expression. The first and the last resort of the scholar is action, the total act of living.
The qualities of the scholar are included in self-trust; and his function is "to cheer, to raise, to guide men by showing them facts amidst experiences."
In order to attain this end he must walk alone. He may be scorned. But he must bear the cross, "the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed."
Emerson reminds us here, of our own Robi Thakur who said:
যদি তোর ডাক শুনে কেউ না আসে তবে একলা চলো রে।
It means:
If they pay no heed to your call walk on your own.
Walk alone, walk alone, walk alone, walk all alone.
If none speaks, o wretched one,
If all turn their face away and cower in silence—
Then open out your heart
dear one, speak out your mind, voice alone.
He has his compensation when he becomes "the world's eye" and "the world's heart". His work is that of "preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history."
This function requires self-trust. Hence, Emerson urges the scholar to keep reliance on himself. The scholar has to be unrestricted and daring and valiant.
The scholar finds that in "going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds."
Since man has the divine in him, the world is still "plastic and fluid and he can impress on it his " net and form". Since each man comprehends the particular natures of all men, each one is capable of sinking all the thoughts and performing all the acts and thoughts done by all men in the past. Coming to the present, Emerson states. "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it." Accordingly, he grasps the nature of the present time and declares: "I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds." This is conceivable since, like the universal soul, the highest law is inherent, even in the meekest object.
And "one design unites the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench."
Next, Emerson gives the authors who have had the "perception of the worth of the vulgar."
The literature of the times has given an importance to the "single individual". This recognition is the real basis of unity: "Everything that tends to insulate the individual -to surround him with barriers of natural respect so that each man shall feel the world his, and man shall treat with man as sovereign state with a sovereign state-tends to true union as well as greatness."
The scholar must be self-sufficient and self-dependent. He must know all.
The American scholars "we will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. This spirit will give rise to "a nation of men" where each one will be "inspired by the Divin Soul."
The refined, patrician, chivalrous tradition of Europe is to be replaced by the democratic and realistic tradition of America.
This can be applied to any country and to any literature.
Herein resides the universality of appeal which the Essay has.
An essay, written by man, at any point in time of human history, rarely gets more honest and sublime than this.
I myself have been a sucker for Bacon. I drool over his style. I have singlehandedly been the Reviewer Prime of so many of his Essays on Goodreads.
However, I love Goodreads for the singular reason that it chooses to ignore me completely. I have almost no followers, and I am not an Opinion Maker here. Hence, I can keep my opinions very silently and move ahead to the next text.
Now coming back to Bacon, I recollect a much-quoted portion from ‘The Two-Book Fallacy’.
Good old Francis says: “God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.”
--- For me, the Prime Creation is the Essay.
I have wanted to review this essay for ages. And now I am reviewing it.
What is the central thought here?
Every common biography of the man would tell you that Emerson extracted himself from the ministry for a diversity of reasons. One of these was the problem of action versus contemplation.
Now, fascinatingly, as he withdrew, he scrutinised various types of heroes like the Man of Genius, the Seer, the Contemplative Man, the Student, the Transcendentalist, and the Scholar.
Henry James thought by scholar, Emerson meant merely the ‘cultivated man’, the man who has had a liberal education. But this is not true.
Emerson's TRUE HERO was the scholar, and the true vocation is that of the scholar. In trying to comprehend and construe this vocation, Emerson faces the tensions arising from a need to gratify the impulses of his youth, to meet the humanitarian demand, to direct his own inclination and to grasp and follow the ethical ideals of English Romanticism.
The result is an ideal for contemplation. The scholar is the Genius and also the inheritor of the New England Clergyman's values. But these two are not compatible. In trying to bring them together, he was forced to over-emphasize self-reliance.
Emerson's scholar has character which is a confident acceptance of the idea that the Universe is perfectly governed by God.
Character also involves honour, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance which arise from the soul's "absolute command of its desires." This would make all action unreal. Here is an ideal of indifference.
Emerson held that God "has given to each his calling in his ruling love...has adapted the brain and the body of men to the work that is to be done in the world." We must allow those who "have a contemplative turn, and voluntarily seek solitude and converse with themselves."
The task of the scholar is to organize the facts, and to find out the unworldly laws that regulate them. He is related to the man of genius. He is not active like the practical man. But he does influence his associates through the cataleptic radiation of his goodness. He is in a state of "virtual hostility" to society.
He resists material wealth and greediness. He understands that the world is an appearance, and he grasps absolute truth through contemplation.
The special attribute of the ‘Contemplative Man’ is character. But Emerson does not want the scholar to appear as a recluse, or as a coward.
Manual labour is said to enrich his vocabulary.
This is described as "pearls and rubies to (his) discourse."
The end proposed is literary. The scholar enters the world only to make the inarticulate thought "vocal with speech" More positively we are told that if the scholar turns towards humanitarian reform, he is likely to lose his self-reliance because of the tyranny of "the popular judgments and modes of action."
So the thoughtful man has to turn his attention toward the perspective of (his) own infinite life." He must explore and develop his own integrity. The scholar begins to find out for he can convert the world. And between inactive meditation and active reform, he chooses the former, though he claims the virtues of the latter.
The intellectual domination of Europe does interfere with the scholar’s integrity. This has led Emerson to emphasize the nationalistic aspect. At the same time, he has to high against materialism, the tyranny of the past, and the voice of the multitude.
Emerson himself remarked that "the path which the hero travels alone is the highway of health and benefit to mankind."
The scholar is more like Carlyle's Hero. He is a priest-king, a poet, a man of letters. He is the Transcendentalist who, as Emerson noted, is the heir of Puritanism. Then we have "scholars out of the church," out of the society.
As Thoreau put it, "the society which I was made for is not here." The scholar's way is not the "ease and plea- sure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society." He must take up "the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed." This is a remarkable task. It is not astonishing that one of his hearers called the address- "Our Yankee Version of a Lecture by Abelard." Here is a plea for the young scholar to ascend his proper intellectual throne with the help of reason. The scholar must be careful about the understanding which often corrupts reason. In other words, this is a plea for mental independence.
Emerson had almost a mystical faith in America. The new world came into being as a reaction to the institutions of the old world and the new world must have a new culture emerging spontaneously from the land.
America then becomes the symbol of freedom. Every American will have to be guided by the spirit: "A nation of men will for the first time exists because each believes him. self-inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men."
The scholar has a powerful eye with which he can achieve synthesis and relatedness. Emerson felt that America needs a "general education of the " eye. He wanted telescopes placed on every street corner so that one can always see the stars which take us beyond the horizon.
The American scholar who is "the world's eye," must become an astronomer who could feel, 'the grandeur of the impression the stars and heavenly bodies make on us. Here is the contrast between observation and vision. The scholar has the awareness of the value of vision, of "the inextinguishableness of the imagination." As he penetrates space, he recaptures the primal wonder which is the first affirmation of transcendental experience.
Here we have the idea of humanity as the "greater It idler the distinguishes came from Swedenborg. With the help of this idea he part men from whole men. Those who treat their careers as a mean of making a living are part men. Whole men are representative men who treat their activities as service to humanity. Then a farmer can be a whole man if he gathers food for humanity. The scholar sums the intellect of mankind in himself; and he thinks for the best interest of humanity.
"The American Scholar" has a consistent tone and the argument is developed systematically. This is because from the beginning we have the dominant organic metaphor. The essay depends on the concept of "One Man" which is the social body of humanity. As against this we have a society "in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man." Mechanical specialization has destroyed the organic completeness of manhood and of the individual.
In this essay Emerson emphasizes change, progression, and originality. Instead of merely absorbing the ideas of others, the scholar must try to create his own ideas. He must publish the living, contemporary truth. The object of knowledge is constantly growing, and the scholar "shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator." The world has a unity and Man Thinking must understand it and live in harmony with the movement towards this unity.
The essay begins with the concept of undivided man and proceeds to define the scholar as Man Thinking. Here Emerson explores the creative soul in man. The strong soul, he says, finds opportunities for expression in actual living. Then the emphasis falls really on the man, not so much on the scholar.
The essay was constructed on the lines of a classical oration. It has its exordium, argument and peroration. First he shares the importance of the theme chosen. Man is greater than any of his functions; and he should, therefore, remember that he is first a man and then a scholar or a priest or any other. The function a person has, cannot be allowed to destroy the individual's nature, to destroy the functionary. Thus he states: "thinking is the function, living is the functionary." The scholar must be Man Thinking, not simply a thinker.
The three forces that shape a man into a scholar are nature, the mind of the past, and active participation in life.
Man and nature have a correspondence. There is an affinity between them. Man seeks to systematize and unify; and so he explores the laws governing facts. Here the scholar is a scientist who observes and classifies and who speculates on the relations between things.
The perception of relation is an ingenious and spontaneous act. Thus the "schoolboy, under the bending dome of day" has an intuitive apprehension that the laws of nature are also those of his soul. Nature and his soul appear as the manifestations of the same universal soul.
They arise from the same root and are related like leaf and flower, like the seal and its impression. If he learns of the one, he will know the other. Thus arises the command "know thyself" which is identical with "Study Nature".
The scholar is prejudiced by the mind of the past in so far as it is embodied in the great classics. He is not to be crushed by this tradition. Books can only inspire him and renew his own creativity. The scholar must "read God directly," live life and feel life. Reading must be followed by "periods of solitude, inquest and self-recovery." This is necessary because "genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence." Books have an important service during "the intervals of darkness" when we have to "repair to the lamps which were kindled" in the past. Just as the unproductive fig tree may be inspired by the example of the productive one, so can a person by the example of the great man. The scholar must have creative reading.
Each man is similar to the other. But he is something "new in nature," and he must arrive at the old conclusions by himself. All minds are self-sufficient parts of the Universal Mind which is growing or expanding.
This leads Emerson to speak next of the influence of the life of action; the "scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again."
The scholar must receive the world into himself. Experience is the means and the measure of knowledge. One knows only so much of himself as he knows of life. Experience offers the "raw material out of which the intellect moulds her splendid products."
Life is our source of experience and expression. The first and the last resort of the scholar is action, the total act of living.
The qualities of the scholar are included in self-trust; and his function is "to cheer, to raise, to guide men by showing them facts amidst experiences."
In order to attain this end he must walk alone. He may be scorned. But he must bear the cross, "the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed."
Emerson reminds us here, of our own Robi Thakur who said:
যদি তোর ডাক শুনে কেউ না আসে তবে একলা চলো রে।
It means:
If they pay no heed to your call walk on your own.
Walk alone, walk alone, walk alone, walk all alone.
If none speaks, o wretched one,
If all turn their face away and cower in silence—
Then open out your heart
dear one, speak out your mind, voice alone.
He has his compensation when he becomes "the world's eye" and "the world's heart". His work is that of "preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history."
This function requires self-trust. Hence, Emerson urges the scholar to keep reliance on himself. The scholar has to be unrestricted and daring and valiant.
The scholar finds that in "going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds."
Since man has the divine in him, the world is still "plastic and fluid and he can impress on it his " net and form". Since each man comprehends the particular natures of all men, each one is capable of sinking all the thoughts and performing all the acts and thoughts done by all men in the past. Coming to the present, Emerson states. "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it." Accordingly, he grasps the nature of the present time and declares: "I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds." This is conceivable since, like the universal soul, the highest law is inherent, even in the meekest object.
And "one design unites the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench."
Next, Emerson gives the authors who have had the "perception of the worth of the vulgar."
The literature of the times has given an importance to the "single individual". This recognition is the real basis of unity: "Everything that tends to insulate the individual -to surround him with barriers of natural respect so that each man shall feel the world his, and man shall treat with man as sovereign state with a sovereign state-tends to true union as well as greatness."
The scholar must be self-sufficient and self-dependent. He must know all.
The American scholars "we will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. This spirit will give rise to "a nation of men" where each one will be "inspired by the Divin Soul."
The refined, patrician, chivalrous tradition of Europe is to be replaced by the democratic and realistic tradition of America.
This can be applied to any country and to any literature.
Herein resides the universality of appeal which the Essay has.
An essay, written by man, at any point in time of human history, rarely gets more honest and sublime than this.
June 22, 2024
In this essay Emerson highlights change, progression, and originality. Instead of merely absorbing the ideas of others, the scholar must try to generate his own ideas. He must publish the living, contemporary truth. The object of knowledge is constantly growing, and the scholar "shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator."
The world has a unity and ‘Man Thinking’ must understand it and live in harmony with the movement towards this unity.
The essay begins with the notion of undivided man and proceeds to define the scholar as Man Thinking. Here Emerson explores the creative soul in man. The strong soul, he says, finds opportunities for expression in actual living. Then the emphasis falls really on the man, not so much on the scholar.
First he shares the importance of the theme chosen. Man is greater than any of his functions; and he should, therefore, remember that he is first a man and then a scholar or a priest or any other in the function a perses has, cannot be allowed to destroy the individual's nature. Thus he states: "thinking to destroy is the function, living the functionary."
The scholar must be ‘Man Thinking’, not simply s thinker. The three forces that shape a man into a scholar are nature, the mind of the past, and active participation in life.
Man and nature have a correspondence. There is an affinity between them. Man seeks to systematize and unify; and so he explores the laws governing facts. Here the scholar is a scientist who observes and classifies and who speculates on the relations between things.
The scholar is influenced by the mind of the past in so far as in is embodied in the great classics. He is not to be crushed by this tradition. Books can only inspire him and renew his own creativity. The scholar must "read God directly," live life and feel life. Reading must be followed by "periods of solitude, inquest and self-recovery." This is necessary because "genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence."
The scholar must have creative reading. Each man is similar to the other. But he is something "new in nature," and he must arrive at the old conclusions by himself. All minds are self-sufficient parts of the Universal Mind which is growing or expanding.
This essay was constructed on the lines of a classical oration, is one of the finest, penned by Emerson.
The world has a unity and ‘Man Thinking’ must understand it and live in harmony with the movement towards this unity.
The essay begins with the notion of undivided man and proceeds to define the scholar as Man Thinking. Here Emerson explores the creative soul in man. The strong soul, he says, finds opportunities for expression in actual living. Then the emphasis falls really on the man, not so much on the scholar.
First he shares the importance of the theme chosen. Man is greater than any of his functions; and he should, therefore, remember that he is first a man and then a scholar or a priest or any other in the function a perses has, cannot be allowed to destroy the individual's nature. Thus he states: "thinking to destroy is the function, living the functionary."
The scholar must be ‘Man Thinking’, not simply s thinker. The three forces that shape a man into a scholar are nature, the mind of the past, and active participation in life.
Man and nature have a correspondence. There is an affinity between them. Man seeks to systematize and unify; and so he explores the laws governing facts. Here the scholar is a scientist who observes and classifies and who speculates on the relations between things.
The scholar is influenced by the mind of the past in so far as in is embodied in the great classics. He is not to be crushed by this tradition. Books can only inspire him and renew his own creativity. The scholar must "read God directly," live life and feel life. Reading must be followed by "periods of solitude, inquest and self-recovery." This is necessary because "genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence."
The scholar must have creative reading. Each man is similar to the other. But he is something "new in nature," and he must arrive at the old conclusions by himself. All minds are self-sufficient parts of the Universal Mind which is growing or expanding.
This essay was constructed on the lines of a classical oration, is one of the finest, penned by Emerson.
May 3, 2020
This is a brilliant essay, and Lowell was right in saying that this is the "intellectual declaration of Independence of the American minds".
1. A scholar must not become a bookworm. Take inspiration from the books of antiquity and create new.
2. A scholar must not be lost in dingy cells. He must also be a man of action. Action will complement and enrich his intellect.
3. Locke, Bacon and Cicero were also young men once. So, dare to walk the untravelled roads.
This essay has so many quotations one can copy and paste on one's walls. I keep coming back to the essay time and again and everytime I discover something new.
I am not a native English speaker so I have to usually read it very slowly. And this also improves my command on the English language. I wish someone translated Emerson into Hindi.
Also, i love the fact that Emerson celebrated the individual over a group-identity.
1. A scholar must not become a bookworm. Take inspiration from the books of antiquity and create new.
2. A scholar must not be lost in dingy cells. He must also be a man of action. Action will complement and enrich his intellect.
3. Locke, Bacon and Cicero were also young men once. So, dare to walk the untravelled roads.
This essay has so many quotations one can copy and paste on one's walls. I keep coming back to the essay time and again and everytime I discover something new.
I am not a native English speaker so I have to usually read it very slowly. And this also improves my command on the English language. I wish someone translated Emerson into Hindi.
Also, i love the fact that Emerson celebrated the individual over a group-identity.
June 4, 2023
No finer writer of non-fiction prose ever walked on American soil. In writing, scholarship, public speaking, and politics Emerson wants an American voice, plain and original just like the country. My favorite is "Compensation": You may be President, but you lose the right to privacy forever. You may be king, but you will not be permitted to spit in public; mother, you may cry for your murdered son, but rest assured the culprit, even if he escapes, will never know a moment's peace for the rest of his life.
October 23, 2017
Technically, I listened to this rather than reading the edition I listed, and half-read a copy from a textbook, but I can't list the audio version to which I listened, and don't want to list the entire textbook, so...
Emerson was a product of his time, and spoke to the people of his time, about his time. In spite of this, he had a lot of practical wisdom, and for the modern reader who can read past his outdated ideas (we educate more people than rich white men now), there is plenty to glean.
Emerson was a product of his time, and spoke to the people of his time, about his time. In spite of this, he had a lot of practical wisdom, and for the modern reader who can read past his outdated ideas (we educate more people than rich white men now), there is plenty to glean.
January 31, 2024
I had to read this for class & I think this is another good introductory point to transcendentalism! Emerson explains how Americans must develop a national identity of literature, writing for the new age and influenced by nature. He also dicsusses the changing role of the scholar in society, arguing against an inactive, ivory-tower scholar.
"Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind."
"Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind."
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December 6, 2019My favorite part about this essay is it’s place in history. Emerson gave this address at Harvard in 1837 and everyone loved it. Then, a year later, he was invited back by the senior class. The address of 1838 was so controversial that Emerson wasn’t invited back for over 20 years! The head faculty blamed the entire event on the senior class.
July 21, 2020
Everyone on the planet should read this and live by his words. Warning: have Google or Alexa nearby for definitions. If you're intelligent or well read enough to not need the aid of a dictionary, God Bless, I needed the help. 61 pages of absolute clarity - you will feel more complete after the read.
August 17, 2019
I loved this essay so much. It has so many interesting ideas. Emerson's structure makes it really easy to follow his thoughts. I especially loved his description of how man is influenced by books and nature and how freedom is essential to fulfilling our potential.
March 29, 2020
"I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low".
September 19, 2025
Definitely see the call for more students to be striving for independence in studies and thinking for themselves. Crazy how many of these ideas continue to be relevant today. However, it does get kind of winding and long winded during some parts..it was okay..!
March 2, 2017
Once a year I read The American Scholar. Just profound!
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