"Only so much do I know, as I have lived."
Key Quotations from Emerson's "The American Scholar"
In his latest print newsletter, Justin Murphy mentioned the essay “The American Scholar,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. In it, Emerson casts a vision for American independence of thought, and the role of the philosopher amongst the mass of mankind.
After reading the essay, I was comforted and encouraged. Perhaps some of you will find Emerson’s vision inspiring.
Here are some key quotations, which give a sense of the whole essay:
In the introduction, Emerson places the role of the scholar in the context of the rest of society:
It is one of those fables, which, out of an unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself. … [You] must take the whole society to find the whole man.
Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. … The fable implies, that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers.
Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship.
In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.
I. On Nature
The first … of the influences upon the mind is that of nature.
The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages.
He shall see, that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one is print.
Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. 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.”
II. On Books
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.
Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation,—the act of thought,—is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue.
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.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.
Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings.
Oh, to read God directly!
III. Thought and Action
There goes in the world a notion, that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian,—as unfit for any handiwork or public labor, as a penknife for an axe. The so-called ‘practical men’ sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing.
As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. 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. The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.
Knowledge must be gained by experience. Empiricism.
I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. … The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power.
I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech.
Those ‘far from fame,’ who dwell and act with him, will feel the force of his constitution in the doings and passages of the day better than it can be measured by any public and designed display. Time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives.
An important reminder to those of us scholars caught up in the affairs of life.
Out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
IV. The Duty of the Scholar
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. They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all be comprised in self-trust. The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation.
Flamsteed and Herschel, in their glazed observatories, may catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, and, the results being splendid and useful, honor is sure. But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, —watching days and months, sometimes, for a few facts; correcting still his old records;—must relinquish display and immediate fame. … Long he must stammer in his speech.
For all this loss and scorn, what offset? 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.
These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He and he only knows the world.
Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy.
The scholar need not be a commentator. (But, from time to time, I am tempted!)
In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach; and bide his own time,—happy enough, if he can satisfy himself alone, that this day he has seen something truly. Success treads on every right step. For the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks.
Success = to see something truly today.
The world is his, who can see through its pretension.
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.
V. American Thought
In his bracing conclusion, Emerson makes an intellectual declaration of independence for the American mind.
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.
Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these,—but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, —some of them suicides.
What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
The intellectual is a man of action, but with a long time horizon.
Patience,—patience;—with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace, the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work, the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world.
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.
A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.