The American Scholar was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier, in which he established a new way for America's fledgling society to regard the world. Sixty years after declaring independence, American culture was still heavily influenced by Europe, and Emerson, for possibly the first time in the country's history, provided a visionary philosophical framework for escaping "from under its iron lids" and building a new, distinctly American cultural identity.
The address was published in 1837, and again in 1838. It was published in London in 1844 as Man Thinking: An Oration. The oration is a more concrete version of Emerson’s philosophical system. It is the “Declaration of Independence'' in American Letters.
The address was a practical appeal to the American Scholar to raise himself above the dust of peasantries and to reach after the inspiration of the divine soul which inspires all men. The message can be summed up in two words – “trust thyself”, do not quit your belief, stand indomitably on your instincts, the world is nothing – man is all.
2. It was Emerson’s best effort to present his whole viewpoint in a single work. There is consistency of tone and consecutiveness of argument in it which is due to the organic metaphor that uses the concept of one man on which the whole essay depends. Emerson believed in the organic principle of the universe as a living organism. He believed in the social body of humanity ion of all things in a unity as the ultimate organisation of all things in a unity. The scholar must work for this unity which is forever changing. Emphasis is placed on the principle of change and progression. The scholar cannot be content with assimilating other man’s ideas he must create his own. He must bring forth that living contemporary truth, not the dead thoughts of the past.
3. The whole address falls into three divisions: the introduction of the subject and its importance, the education of the scholar and the forces that influence him, and the duties and functions of the scholar as Emerson sees it.
4. He starts with the concept that the individual is the unit of measurement in the universe. In the individual is the law of all nature. The social body of humanity is properly “one man”. But in the divided state various functions of the “one man” are distributed to individuals who do their own work and are cut off from the rest. Thus each is a “part” man and not a ‘whole’ man. Man has thus wronged himself- he has become mass and herd, and the individual is of no account. This wrong is to be righted by the scholar to whom intellect has been delegated in the individual distribution. Rightly understood it means that the scholar is “Man Thinking”. And the scholar must realise that thinking is a continual process, he must continue thinking and promulgating (make known to the people) or disseminate the new living thought and not to be the parrot of scholar man’s thinking.
5. What are the main influences on a scholar during his education: a) nature, b) the mind of the past, c) the world, and d) the scholar’s participation in the experience of life. He may know himself. There is affinity between them. Man seeks to systematize and unify and so he explores the laws governing facts. He is a scientist who observes and classifies and speculates on the relations between things. Thus he has the perception that relation is an imaginative and intuitive act, nature and his soul appears as the manifestations of the same universal soul. If he learns one he will know the other. To follow the command “know thyself” man studies nature.
a) Nature: Man is constantly in the presence of nature. What is nature?
There is never a beginning; there is never an end to the continuity of this web of God but always circular power returning to itself. Man and nature have correspondence, man studies nature so that he may know himself. Nature and his soul appear as the manifestation of the same universal soul. If he learns one he will know the other. To follow the command “know thyself” man must study nature.
b) The mind of the past- in the form of literature or art or any institutions that has a mind inscribed on it- also teaches him. Through them he comes to know the minds of the greatest man of ages. But books should inspire man to find what is highest within himself. The whole value of history, of biography is to increase man’s self trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. Thus the great books inspire man but they must not confine him. They should help in revealing his creative activity. Reading must be followed by periods of solitude in quest and self recovery for genius can be his enemy by over influence. They should help him as nature does to know himself. By knowing himself he knows another man. The deeper he penetrates into his secret the more he will understand other people. By his intuitive feelings he will find they are the most acceptable, most public and universally true. Better part of every man feels “this is myself”.
C) Participation in life and experience of life are also essential to the scholar. Activity and action may be subordinates, but they are essential to the scholar. Without this experience he is not a full man, because thought can never ripen into truth. The scholar must receive the world into him, brood on it, give it a new arrangement and utter it. One knows only so much of himself as he knows about life. Experience of life is the raw material for intellect and the instructor in eloquence and wisdom. The final value of life is that like books, it is a resource where the scholar can always go to renew himself. Live life and feel life.
6. He then discusses the duties and functions of the scholar. He says that they are such as are suitable to Man Thinking. This may be comprised in one virtue of self trust. And it is through this self trust that the scholar is to cheer, to raise and to guide men. He is to do this by seeing reality himself and showing it to them. This can only be done by observation, painful slow observation without hope of immediate fame. He will encounter scorn and hostility but he must bear all this and travel alone for the ultimate compensation that he will be the world’s heart, the world’s eye.
7. For this he requires confidence in himself and never to defer to the popular cry. He must be free of any urgent kind of hindrance. He must be brave. Fear springs from ignorance. He must face things squarely, perceive them clearly, and publish them for what they really are. He must restore the value of the individual which is the real basis of unity, for it is one soul which animates all men.
8. He ends by telling the American scholar to give up the tradition of Europe and replace it with their own liking for native tradition. These views can be applied to any nation and to any literature and therein lies the importance and the universality of the essay.
Summary
Emerson uses Transcendentalist and Romantic views to get his points across by explaining a true American scholar's relationship to nature. There are a few key points he makes that flesh out this vision:
We are all fragments, "as the hand is divided into fingers", of a greater creature, which is mankind itself, "a doctrine ever new and sublime."
An individual may live in either of two states. In one, the busy, "divided" or "degenerate" state, he does not "possess himself" but identifies with his occupation or a monotonous action; in the other, "right" state, he is elevated to "Man", at one with all mankind.
To achieve this higher state of mind, the modern American scholar must reject old ideas and think for him or herself, to become "Man Thinking" rather than "a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking", "the victim of society", "the sluggard intellect of this continent".
"The American Scholar" has an obligation, as "Man Thinking", within this "One Man" concept, to see the world clearly, not severely influenced by traditional/historical views, and to broaden his understanding of the world from fresh eyes, to "defer never to the popular cry."
The scholar's education consists of three influences:
I. Nature as the most important influence on the mind
II. The Past manifest in books
III. Action and its relation to experience
The last, unnumbered part of the text is devoted to Emerson's view on the "Duties" of the American Scholar who has become the "Man Thinking."
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