Emerson’s view about the duties of The American Scholar

“The American Scholar” is one of the famous essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He delivered this as a lecture to the Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard College, on 31 August 1837. This lecture mainly contains Emerson’s view of the American Scholar that means what an ideal American Scholar should be like.

The American Scholar may be divided into two parts. The first part contains an account of the influences operating upon the American Scholar to educate him. This part is further divided into three parts, one part dealing with the influences of nature, the second, with that of books, and the third with that of action. The second part contains Emerson’s view of the duties and functions of the American Scholar.

          The ideal picture of an American Scholar that Emerson gives in his famous essay ‘The American Scholar’ is indeed a revolutionary one. It sharply contrasts with the traditional ideal of a scholar who is a valetudinarian, a man of thinking only, given to study and acquiring knowledge. Emerson’s ideal of a scholar is that he should be a man of study great amount of self-confidence, and be brave and free to do his duties as a revolutionary.

Then Emerson tells about the various sources of education open to the American Scholar. The influence of nature is the foremost. A scholar will open out his soul to Nature and then the influence of nature will flow into him and would mould his soul. Then he will realize the affinity of the human soul and that of nature.

         

The scholar should study books, but books are not used by him as things of follow blindly. Book do not pin him down. Mere seekers of knowledge grow up in libraries are book worms. The true scholar is a ‘man thinking’; he must not be subdued by books. He should accept only the best things in the books and reject all the rest. Then Emerson emphasizes action. A Scholar must be a man of action. Without action, the scholar is not yet man because thought can never ripen into truth without action.

         

People in general are largely affected by books. Books have a profound influence upon all reading people, but especially upon the mind of the scholar. The scholar of the first age studied the world around him, imposed his own thoughts upon it, and formed his own philosophy that may be called truth.

Books should be used only for inspiration, not for anything else. Books should not pin down a genius. A genius is an active soul which may lie dormant in man. It looks forwards, not backward. But the geniuses of the past should not exert over-influence on the genius of the present through books. But such over-

influence is observed in the case of some great minds of the past like Shakespeare. This should not be the case with the American Scholar.

         

Emerson says, Books are the best of things, well used; abused among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothings but to inspire. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kin should.

Emerson has given, through the figure of the American Scholar, an ideal American who is to build a new American which will be a torch-bearer to the other nations of the world.