The state of society is one 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.

These lines occur in Emerson’s essay “The American Scholar”.

The author regrets that the present state of man has degenerated into a mere thing, a lifeless inert matter as a result of his connection being severed from One Man. Emerson has a unique conception of man. He thinks that all men constitute One Man, and One Man is divided into multitudes. In the social state in which an individual man has a particular function to do, the One Man is divided into so many individuals. Each individual is performing his function as a farmer, a professor, or an engineer, rather he combines within himself all the multifarious functions that are being done by other individuals, as some other individual is performing his duty. That is, One Man has multifarious functions. These functions are apportioned to individuals so that if we conceive of all the individuals as constituting the One Man, we have an idea of the real existence of man- One Man divided into many with different individual functions, and all men together constituting One Man. Now, each individual, to possess himself, that is, to realize his full self, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But the matter for regret is that the original unit-One Man- which is the fountain of power to the multitudes, has been distributed among them so minutely that it is spilled into drops. These drops cannot be gathered again into One Man. As a result, the society looks like one in which the members have been cut off from the main trunk-One Man. The severed members exist separately, looking like monsters as would happen if the limbs of a body were cut off from it, and each had a separate existence and walked about. If a good finger or a stomach were walking about in front of us, it would virtually look like a monster.