The American Scholar

by

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The American Scholar Character Analysis

The American Scholar is Emerson’s intended audience for the essay. The American Scholar is a collective term for post-Revolutionary War college students who are capable, according to Emerson, of finally breaking away from European influences and pioneering new forms of art and philosophies that are uniquely American. He originally delivered the essay as a speech to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, an intellectual audience that embodies this ideal of the American Scholar. Emerson’s hope for the American Scholar is that they will bring unity to America, which had become increasingly divided along lines of class, as well as long-standing lines of sex, race, and religion. Emerson warns the American Scholar that they will have to be very self-reliant and get used to being seen as something of an outcast, but that ultimately their work can potentially revolutionize and revitalize American society and the world at large.

The American Scholar Quotes in The American Scholar

The The American Scholar quotes below are all either spoken by The American Scholar or refer to The American Scholar. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Social Unity Theme Icon
).
The American Scholar Quotes

Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man—present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 150
Explanation and Analysis:

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. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of so much of his own mind does he not yet possess.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 151-152
Explanation and Analysis:

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 155
Explanation and Analysis:

Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town; in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with man men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 158-159
Explanation and Analysis:

Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:

We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defense and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
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The American Scholar Quotes in The American Scholar

The The American Scholar quotes below are all either spoken by The American Scholar or refer to The American Scholar. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Social Unity Theme Icon
).
The American Scholar Quotes

Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man—present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 150
Explanation and Analysis:

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. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of so much of his own mind does he not yet possess.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 151-152
Explanation and Analysis:

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 155
Explanation and Analysis:

Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town; in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with man men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 158-159
Explanation and Analysis:

Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:

We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defense and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

Related Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson (speaker), The American Scholar
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis: