The American Scholar (Emerson)

Emerson's address titled "An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Cambridge, August 31, 1837" was republished as "The American Scholar" in 1849, showing that Emerson was speaking to more than the group of scholars at Harvard.

This address is a good summary of Emerson's work, of his incessant attempt to convince Americans to think for themselves, to become self-reliant, to rid themselves of their insecurity with which they judge themselves in comparison with Europe.

"Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves" (Emerson 1138).

Emerson also emphasizes "creative reading."

"One must be an inventor to read well... when the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world" (Emerson 1142).

One of the reasons I love Emerson is that he longs for men to savor the small and profound things in life, to go against the mindless flow of the masses and enjoy beauty in simplicity. Thus "the sense of our author is as broad as the world." Instead of spreading ourselves thin over a massive amount of books in our desperate attempt to become scholarly, perhaps we ought to take Emerson's advice and just reread the Great Gatsby about five times: "The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time... I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low" (Emerson 1149).

"Man is surprised to find that things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean."

Read and enjoy Emerson.