Emerson on the American Scholar

I’ve recently taken to the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson because he was arguably the first world-class public intellectual of a distinctly American type. Of course there were great thinkers and writers in America before his time, but Emerson was the first man to gain respect in courtly Europe, who did not mimic the ways of courtly Europe. Until Emerson, American intellectuals were either European and respected or American and low.

It’s rather extraordinary how the intellectual economy of his time (before the rationalization of academia throughout the 20th century) so closely resembles the intellectual economy of our time (the collapsing of rationalized academia).

Emerson came from a family of Unitarian preachers, a job he trained for and was expected to pursue. But he defected early in his career, and instead made a living by giving paid lectures (in person, across the country; there was a network of ‘lyceums’ where this was a thing). And then turning his lectures into books, which made no money at first, though eventually they did.

His essay, *The American Scholar, *should be mandatory reading for anyone out there finding their own voice in the strange state of American arts and letters today.

Emerson praises the quiet, truth-seeking scholar who toils privately and obscurely. One must forego “display and immediate fame,” remain ignorant about the popular topics of the day, endure poverty and solitude and the disdain of more fashionable thinkers, in order to slowly find the truth.

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.

In the long period of his preparation he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoulder him aside.

Long he must stammer in his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept—how often!—poverty and solitude.

And for what? Why bother with these hardships?

For the intrinsic value of exercising the highest functions of one’s nature.

For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society.

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.