Or, Discuss how the American Scholar is influenced by Nature.
Or, How does Emerson show a similarity between Nature and his own mind?
Answer: The American Scholar’s mind is built by several things: the books of the past, the influences of Nature, and his own action. Emerson places great emphasis on the influences of Nature on the American Scholar. The whole concept belongs to Emerson’s
the philosophical idea of transcendentalism, which was a literary movement that flourished between 1835 and 1860 in New England, America. Emerson was one of the pioneers of this movement. Some of the others were Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, and Jones Very. They were active social reformers – abolitionists, feminists, and early ecologists. They all shared their views on social reform in articles in The Dial, a transcendentalist magazine. Emerson, in addition to his articles in the said magazine, expressed his transcendentalist ideas in his essay “Nature”, as Thoreau did in his Walden. The emphasis on the influences of Nature seems to have come directly from the author’s ideas as expressed in the “Nature”) It upholds the doctrine that there is something in the human beings that transcends human nature – a spark of divinity. It is also akin to the concept of mysticism which beliefs in the possibility of the union of man’s soul with some higher spirit or force such as nature or deity. The union is achieved through imagination or contemplation and involves the subordination of reason to intuition both as a means of contacting the higher force and as a source of knowledge. But Emerson’s ideas about these doctrines are not exactly similar to the ideas of others. In the essay “The American Scholar” his ideas about the relations between Nature and the human mind appear with their distinctive aspects.
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 discovers a similarity between them and his own mind, because both proceed from one root, that is, the soul of his soul. 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. It is always a circular power, which perpetually returns to itself. It resembles the scholar’s own spirit which is without beginning, without end. It is so entire, so boundless. The young, inexperienced mind does not know about all this. Such a mind first thinks that everything is individual, or that everything has a separate existence of its own. He gradually joins things;’ he joins two things first, then he joins some more, then thousands. In this, he discovers that all things have the same nature, that there is essential unity behind the apparent diversity of things, and that there is a law that unifies all the varied phenomena of things. 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 appear. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women are seen conversing. They also see other men and women converse. The Scholar is he, of all men, whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning to itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending he never can find so entire, so boundless. Far too as her splendors shine, system on systems shooting like rays, upward, downward, without a center, without circumference — in the mass and in the practice, Nature hastens to render an account of herself to the mind. Classification begins. To the young mind, everything is individual and stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three, the 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. It presently learns that since the dawn of history there has been a constant accumulation and classifying of facts. 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 methods throughout the matter, and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, and identity, in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact; one after another reduces all strange constitutions, all-new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on forever to animate the last fiber or organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight. … when he has learned to worship the soul and to see that the nature that now is, is only the first groupings of its gigantic hand, he shall look forward to an ever-expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator, He shall see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is a seal and one is a print. 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. So much of nature as he is ignorant of his own mind does not yet possess. And in fine, the ancient precept, “know thy self” and the modern precept “study nature”, become at last one maxim.
The experienced mind of the scholar discovers that there is also a law of the human mind. The scholar will realize that he and all things proceed from the same source that is the soul of his soul.) The prospect of an ever-expanding knowledge opens before him as he studies the phenomena of Nature. Nature is the central part of his soul; it answers to his soul part for part. Nature’s laws are, as he finds out, the laws of his own mind. Nature becomes the measure of his own attainments. He knows only that much of his own mind as he knows of nature, and that much of his mind he remains ignorant of as he is ignorant of nature. The amount of his self-realization becomes equal to the amount of his knowledge of nature.
Emerson has shown a similarity between the law of nature and the law of the human mind. “There is never a beginning, there is never an end to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit.” A scholar should realize the power of his mind through his study of Nature. He is not to depend upon books for his knowledge of the self; he is to depend upon Nature for acquiring knowledge for his self-realization. His idea is a revolutionary one because the traditional idea of acquiring knowledge is that one should acquire knowledge merely by studying books) Though Emerson does not write off the idea of the influence of books, he lays prime importance upon the study of Nature. In this respect, Emerson’s ideas have some similarities with the ideas of the English romanticist, William Wordsworth, who was a pioneer in placing the greatest importance upon Nature that was a friend, philosopher, and guide to mankind. Emerson is regarded as one of the first group of American romanticists, and it is quite natural that his ideas are largely similar to those of Wordsworth in respect of Nature.
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