In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson gave an oration to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge, addressing the topic of the American scholar. In the address, Emerson stirred up controversy by condemning books. He claims that “Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst” (Emerson 59). The premise of “The American Scholar,” and a point brought up in his other works, is that much of the knowledge a scholar should acquire cannot be found inside a library. Emerson contends that scholars can learn more from experiencing the world firsthand than they can from reading about the world in books.
Emerson’s argument against books is most concentrated in the second section of “The American Scholar.” He concedes that books can be extremely beneficial, but the amount of benefit a book can provide “depends on how far the process had gone, transmuting life into truth” (59). His problem is with the way scholars take the words of past thinkers as gospel, never attempting to form their own opinions and views:
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. (59)
The danger, Emerson asserts, is that academia’s concentration on studying books so devotedly stifles the scholar’s mind, and therefore no new ideas are generated. If no new ideas are generated, the concept of the scholar becomes stagnant, and the entire world of academia implodes. For that reason, Emerson insists that books “are for the scholar’s idle times” (60) and the majority of the scholar’s waking hours should be spent away from the written word, in order to expand his own experiences and garner his own philosophies about the world around him.
Emerson expounds on the idea of taking action in the third section of “The American Scholar.” “Action,” Emerson tells us, “is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth” (61). In order to become a true scholar, one must have experiences. One cannot expect to understand the world simply by reading another person’s account of it, simply because each person’s perspective of the world is unique. Each person’s background, how they are raised, where they live, contribute to the way they view the world. Only reading other people’s accounts of the world silences the scholar’s own individual voice. Emerson says of his own experiences, “The world—this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself” (61). Here, Emerson emphasizes the potential for personal growth when one experiences the world. By interacting with the world, one learns not only about the world, but about themselves through their reactions to the world.
The “other me” or “not me” as it is sometimes referred to also appears in Emerson’s work Nature. According to Emerson, the “not me” encompasses everything in the universe outside of the individual soul, and can be put into the category of “nature.” Emerson values the communion between the soul and nature:
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,–no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, –my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,–all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball, I am nothing, I see all the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. (29).
In Emerson’s view, one can reach elevated states of being by simply experiencing nature. The “mean egotism” dissipates and one loses himself to the beauty and purity of the world around him. By disconnecting from oneself and immersing oneself into the world around him, one’s mind is opened to otherworldly thoughts, and it circles back and expands his own mind. It is this kind of spiritual experience that the scholar cannot adequately know vicariously through a book; he must live it firsthand, and in Emerson’s mind it is an invaluable experience.
Emerson’s address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society was received with a fair amount of criticism, but he raises many valid points. The true scholar cannot rely solely on books to reveal all the mysteries of the world, and it certainly does not do the scholar any good to parrot the thoughts of writers that came before him. As Emerson states, “Each age…must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding” (59). In order for each generation to write good transmutations of life into truth, they must venture out into the world and experience it.
Works Cited
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Emerson’s Prose & Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris.
“Nature” pp 27-55. New York (2001).
“The American Scholar” pp 56-69. Norton. New York (2001).
