Or, What is an American Scholar like? What are the influences that build him up as a scholar?
Or, What elements are needed to build up the American scholar?
Or, How can the American scholar be built up?
Answer: In the essay “The American Scholar” Emerson has given a clear picture of what an American Scholar is like, and what are the factors that go towards making him a true scholar in the Emersonian sense of the term.
In the context of the degenerate state of society, men have suffered amputation from the trunk – One Man. The scholar is to regenerate such a society and is the delegated intellect. He is not a mere thinker, or worse, imitator of other men. He is Man Thinking, catering original thinking beneficial to mankind. A true scholar is the only true master.
But he may err and if he does err, he may forfeit his privilege. So it is important that he gets the right influences that shape him into a true scholar – the right type of education that builds him up as a scholar.
The true scholar should receive education from the three sources— Nature, books, and his own actions. The combined influences of the three sources will rightly transform him from a bookworm into a man of broad culture who will participate in the world of ideas and action. He must elevate himself to the ideal of “Man Thinking.” He must not feed himself with the harvest of other lands but must sing of his own country. His duties he will find as summarised or summed up in self-trust. He will trust himself and will ally himself with humanity at large.
The influences of Nature on the mind of the American Scholar are of the first and foremost importance. He studies the phenomena of Nature and realizes that there is never a beginning, never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of the web of God. He realizes that all things have the same nature and that there is essential unity behind the apparent diversity of things and there is a law that unifies all the varied phenomena of things. He also realizes that he and all things proceed from the same source – the soul of his soul. The prospect of an ever-expanding knowledge opens before him as he studies the phenomena of nature. To quote Emerson, “The first in time and 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. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages.” He must settle its value in his mind. Far too as nature’s splendors shine, system on the system, shooting like rays, upward, downward, without a center, without circumference in the mass and in the particle the scholar preserves all these and has knowledge. Nature hastens to render an account of herself to the scholar’s mind. Classification begins, To the young mind of a scholar, everything is individual, and stands by itself. By and by, he finds out how to join two things and sees in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running underground whereby contrary and remote things cohere and flower out from one stem. He presently learns that since the dawn of history there has been a constant accumulation and classifying of facts.”
When this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of more earthly nature when he has learned to worship the soul, and the see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the first gropings of its gigantic hand, he shall look forward to an ever-expanding knowledge as to becoming a creator. He shall see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for the part so much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And in fine, the ancient precept “know thyself” and the modern precept “study nature” become at last one maxim.
Books also exert great influence upon the mind of the scholar. But he does not slavishly follow the masterminds of the past. He rejects those of their thoughts that have become obsolete and accepts those that are still acceptable. To quote Emerson, “The theory of books is noble. 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. It came into his life; it went out from him immortal thoughts. It came to him short-lived actions.”
Action is another important element for a scholar. Action is not subordinate to him, but is essential. Without action, he is not even a full man. Through action, a scholar brings about a cultural revolution. Without action, the scholar is not yet a man. Without action, his thoughts can never ripen into truth. Action is the raw material out of which the intellect molds its splendid products. He who devotes his total strength to action obtains the richest return of wisdom.
Transcendentalism should be the philosophical ideal for the American Scholar. The scholar should be highly imbued with that idea, and his mind should be built on it.
Self-confidence is another important factor for the scholar. He should have the confidence to think that not only does he know the world properly but also that he will not be carried away from his own convictions by mere appearances.
The scholar should be brave. He should not tolerate any hindrances except those which arise from within himself.
Such a scholar will be able ultimately to achieve Emerson’s purpose – the realization of a cultural revolution, as a result of which America will become free from the shackles of foreign yoke in respect of thoughts and ideas; it will become a model for others to follow.
Emerson has given a picture of the American Scholar and has described the factors that go toward making such a scholar. His ideas about the scholar and what goes toward making him are indeed wonderful.
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