“The American Scholar”

By
Ralph Waldo Emerson
An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge,
August 31, 1837
● Academic year In Cambridge University begins by September 1
● Honorary society- distinguished students are members of this society- Phi Beta Kappa
society
● Form - an oration
● Phi Beta Kappa Society was established in the year 1776
● 1776 is the year of American Declaration of Independence
● Published in 1837 as a pamphlet in US
● 1838 reprinted in US
● 1844- Published as ‘ Manthinking, an Oration’ in London
Introduction:

● Begins with greetings and initiates with the purpose- “the love of letters”- creative writing-
intellectual art
● It (the love of letters) is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct-
● The time is already come
● Sluggard intellect – Intellectual ability – awaken
● Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a
close
● Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that poetry will revive and lead in a new age
● As the brightest star in the constellation Harp, Lyra is Vega – 4 stars in a triangle shape
● I accept the topic - the American Scholar
● What light new days and events have thrown on his character, and his hopes
● From old Fable – God divided Man into men in order to help himself – He is the one and all-
Plato/ Plutarch's Brotherly Love
● Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier
● Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things
● In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is,
Man Thinking
● Man Thinking - Him nature solicits with all her placid, all her monitory pictures; him the past
instructs; him the future invites
● the old oracle said, ‘All things have two handles: beware of the wrong one.’ – “Know
Thyself”
● the main influences he receives; Nature, Books, Action

Nature, the first influence:

● the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of “nature”
● Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass
grows.
● Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden – Scholar must value this
● the inexplicable continuity of this web of God – Never a beginning and never end –
Boundless
● Classification begins. To the young mind, everything 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; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct,
● this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of more earthly natures
 ● Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind.
● Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments.
● the ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,”

The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the Past:

● whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed.

● Books are the best type of the influence of the past, - Truth
● Theory of the books – Noble- came into as life – came out as Truth – Immortal thoughts
● It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry.
● It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires.

The sacredness -attaches to the act of creation, ⎯ the act of thought, ⎯ is transferred to the
● transmuting life into truth.
●
record
● a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also – wise spirit
● Instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant.
● Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking;
● Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which
Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were
only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books- Bookworms
● Man Thinking – connects - Third Estate with the world and the soul.
● Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.
● Books are to inspire-
● The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
● The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. - In this action, it is genius;
● Institutions taught the past – looks backward not forward – genius looks forward
● man hopes: genius creates.
● There are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words;
● the enemy of genius by over influence- The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now
for two hundred years.
● Books are for the scholar's idle times- when he read God directly-
● when the sun is hid, and the stars withdraw their shining,- then must read
● The Arabian proverb says, “A fig tree, looking on a fig tree, becometh fruitful.”
● the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. They impress us with the
conviction, that one nature wrote and the same reads.
● We read the verses of one of the great English poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden,
with the most modern joy,
● as the human body can be nourished on any food,- the human mind can be fed by any
knowledge
● As the Spanish proverb says, “He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry
out the wealth of the Indies.” – One must carry knowledge with him
● When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read
becomes luminous with manifold allusion.
● Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world
● Plato and Shakespeare
● there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man.

The last great influence upon the Scholar: Action

 ● Common notion - the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, - unfit- not a practical
man
● Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man
● Without it, thought can never ripen into truth
● Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.
● Thoughts transit into actions
● Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.
● The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action
● the raw material out of which the intellect moulds her splendid products.
● experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin.
● he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.
● Life is our dictionary. – Scholar should enrich his vocabulary – learn Grammar

● the name of Polarity, ⎯ these “fits of easy transmission and reflection,” as Newton called
● Final value of action – better than books – a Resource

them, are the law of nature because they are the law of spirit.

● when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness, ⎯ he has always the
● The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other.

resource to live.
● Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary.
● The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to
think.
● Living is a total act. Thinking is a partial act.
● Time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives.
● out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
● labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work;

I have now spoken of the education of the scholar by nature, by books, and by action. It remains
to say somewhat of his duties.

Duties of the Scholar:

● There are much – to become ‘Man Thinking’ – comprised in ‘Self-Trust’

● The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst
appearances.
● Flamsteed and Herschel, - Astronauts- reference

● he must accept, ⎯ how often! poverty and solitude.

● must relinquish display and immediate fame.

● self-relying and self-directed

● He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature.
● He is one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public
and illustrious thoughts.
● He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart.
● These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself - He and he only
knows the world
● Success treads on every right step.
● The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is
found to have recorded that, which men in crowded cities find true for them also.
● 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.
 ● In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, ⎯ free and brave.
● the definition of freedom, “without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own
constitution.”
● Brave; for fear is a thing, which a scholar by his very function puts behind him.
● Fear always springs from ignorance.
● So is the danger a danger still; so is the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face it.
● The great man makes the great thing.
● Men in history, men in the world of today are bugs, are spawn, and are called ‘the mass’ and
‘the herd.’
● The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man.
● For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.
● Each philosopher, each bard, each actor, has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one
day I can do for myself.
● It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.

I have to say, of nearer reference to the time and to this country:

● If there is any period one would desire to be born in, ⎯ is it not the age of Revolution; when
● “Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.” – Hamlet’s unhappiness – we are infected with.

the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope;

● when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new
era?
● I read with joy some of the auspicious signs of the coming days, as they glimmer already
through poetry and art, through philosophy and science, through church and state.
● Instead of the sublime and beautiful; the near, the low, the common, was explored and
poetized.
● The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning
of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign,
● I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; - I embrace the common, I explore and sit
at the feet of the familiar, the low.
● This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of
Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. – brought them success
● In contrast with their writing, the style of Pope, of Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and
pedantic. This writing is blood-warm.
● Man is surprised to find that things near – near explains far – the drop is a small ocean
● Goethe, the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the

● There is one man of genius, who talked about philosophy of life, ⎯ I mean Emanuel
ancients.

Swedenborg.
● Another genius of our time – the melancholy Pestalozzi, “that no man in God's wide earth is
either willing or able to help any other man.” Help must come from the bosom alone.
● The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the
contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be a university of knowledges.
● We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American
freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. – hindered from action -
Remedy?
● We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own
minds.
● The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence.
The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defense and a wreath of joy around
all.
● A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the
Divine Soul which also inspires all men.