The American Scholar

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1837

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Transcendentalism and the Individual

Transcendentalism is a philosophy that Emerson helped to found, along with his friends Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller. Its precepts are both a belief in the individual—and the power of individual thought to shape the world—and a sense of universality and the common good. Emerson often expresses this sense of universality as an “one soul” (Paragraph 35): a spirit and intelligence that animates all living creatures. He believes that it is an awareness of this common spirit that forms a true community, more than an adherence to social customs and institutions.

This philosophy can be seen to underpin much of “The American Scholar,” which is not surprising, since the lecture concerns Emerson’s vision of an ideal American intellectual. Emerson alludes often in the lecture to a sense of universality and oneness, which he believes that the scholar ignores at his peril. Writing about the scholar’s relation to the natural world, he deems it necessary that a scholar not only know how to identify and classify natural phenomena, but also that he have an awareness of his own commonality with nature: “He shall see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind” (Paragraph 9). Elsewhere in the lecture, Emerson decries what he sees as the tendency towards herd thinking in modern life, and declares that individual consciousness is all: “The world is nothing, the man is all” (Paragraph 43). This reflects his transcendentalist view of the shaping power of the mind, and the ephemerality and flimsiness of worldly customs.

The paradox of transcendentalism is that it is a philosophy of both individualism and connectivity. Emerson believes that every individual is a potential leader, rejecting the idea that only certain men are destined to lead; he believes that the more aware man is of the “one soul” (Paragraph 35), the more empowered he is. His ultimate vision of an ideal society is one that is not so much a democracy as it is a nation of rulers: “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds […] A nation of man will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men” (Paragraph 43).

The Dangers and Possibilities of Modern Life

While Emerson is optimistic about the innate potential of man, he is less so about the time in which he is living. He believes that a scholar should not submit to this time; rather, he should hold himself apart from it and not judge his works by its standards. This is not the same thing, in Emerson’s view, as holding himself apart from humankind and the physical and natural world; it is rather getting closer to this world, by dispensing with the world of appearances and changing fashions.

Emerson sees modern life as encouraging a dangerous brand of herd thinking, on the one hand, and a tendency towards isolation and over-specialization, on the other. He believes that the crowded and anonymous nature of modern life has encouraged men to seek shelter in ever smaller and more specialized fields, and to forget their commonality with other men. This has in turn led them to ignore parts of their own natures: “The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man” (Paragraph 4). At the same time, he believes that modern man has become too content to be a part of the crowd: “Men are become of no account. Men in history, men in the world of to-day, are bugs, are spawn, and are called ‘the mass’ and ‘the herd’” (Paragraph 34).

Yet Emerson also sees possibilities for the American intellectual in what he calls “the age of Introversion” (Paragraph 38). He believes that the tendency of his age to focus on the small and the local—rather than on the elevated and the heroic—will allow the intellectual to get his real world bearings: “I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic […] I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low” (Paragraph 40). As a believer in the transformative power of the individual, he also embraces what he sees as “the new importance given to every single person” (Paragraph 43). He believes that this emphasis on individual rights will usher in a new sense of community and belonging. Finally, Emerson believes that the role of the modern intellectual is to be thoughtfully engaged with his own time, rather than cowed and defeated by it. He also believes that the modern intellectual should retain a sense of timelessness and perspective: “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it” (Paragraph 38).

The New World Versus the Old World

Emerson sets out in this lecture to define a particularly American type of intellectual, as distinct from a European one. He declares as much in the final paragraph of his lecture: “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” (Paragraph 43). In using the term “freeman,” Emerson emphasizes the intent of American founders to escape the rule and influence of Europe; he regrets that they have “already” squandered this attempt and fallen short of their own aims.

The “courtly muses of Europe” is also a telling phrase, indicating Emerson’s view of European intellectuals as overly refined and beholden to tradition. It evokes an indoor, civilized world that is the opposite of the wildness and vigor that Emerson wishes the American intellectual to claim as his destiny. Emerson urges the American scholar to go out into the world, rather than hide from it, and to cultivate a wide and varied circle of acquaintances: “The world […] lies wide all around […] I run eagerly into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with speech” (Paragraph 22). While acknowledging the importance of being well versed in classic old works of literature, Emerson also cautions the American scholar not to value these lauded old works purely for their own sake. Reminding the American scholar that “genius looks forward” (Paragraph 15), Emerson urges him to consider himself as a potential molder of the world, rather than to assume that the world has already been made.

Emerson emphasizes the importance of the individual, as opposed to institutions; this is another way in which he can be seen to break away from a traditional European mode of thought. Rejecting the idea that there are only a few born leaders at any given time—whether in the fields of culture or government—he instead suggests that men should trust more in their innate potential and less in preordained social systems: “As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it […] Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind” (Paragraph 33). This statement also indicates Emerson’s belief in man’s inherent divinity and the connectedness of all living things: a type of religiousness that has more to do with alertness than with regular churchgoing, and that is therefore different from European religious custom.