The American Scholar of the Twentieth Century: As Address Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of the Northwestern University (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from The American Scholar of the Twentieth Century: As Address Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of the Northwestern University

Henrik Ibsen, and his way of putting the matter is this: Men still call for special revolutions, for revolutions in politics, in externals. But all that sort of thing is trumpery. It is the human soul that must revolt. If we give this truth its rightful meaning, not misinterpreting it as an excuse for quietism, nor ourselves withdrawing from the arena under its shelter, we shall find it to be the very essence of every philosophy of reform, the prerequisite of every effective effort for the regeneration of our social life.

At the close of the summer of 1787, the Fathers of the Republic were completing their arduous task of shaping that instrument of government which we call the Constitution of the United States, and which we hold in veneration as the fundamental law of a free com monwealth based upon the principle of self-government. Thus did our ancestors give lasting political effect to the ideas of the Declara tion of Independence. Exactly half a century later, on the closing day of the summer of 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson, then thirty four years of age, addressed the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College in words that burned themselves upon the minds of his hearers, and marked an epoch in the history of American thought. His theme was The American Scholar, and his utterance has, by common con sent, come to be known as our intellectual Declaration of Independence. The young men who heard this address, says Dr. Holmes, Went out from it as if a prophet had been proclaiming to them, 'thus saith the Lord From the very first paragraph, the address was a clarion call to the onset in our warfare of the spirit, a prophetic paean sublimely confident of the intellectual victories that our future must have in store. Perhaps the time is already come, said the young speaker, 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. 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. Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, shall one day be the pole star for a thousand years?

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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The American Scholar of the Twentieth Century: As Address Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of the Northwestern University

American sovereigns were created in such numbers by the American Revolution that it could not seem so great a thing for Franklin, or another, to "stand before kings" unabashed by their artificial magnificence. As the result of that momentous happening, the individual acquired a new dignity, and the simple virtues of upright manhood came to be held a more important possession than quarterings or pedigrees. But there is a royalty of a different sort to which tribute may be paid by the most democratically minded without any loss of self-respect. It is the royalty that holds sway over the kingdoms of the intellect, and exacts a homage that we willingly bestow. So our American revolt was declared against Tory ministers and Hanoverian kings, but by no means against the spiritual rule of Shakespeare and Milton, which we continued gladly and reverently to acknowledge. Yet it must be confessed that, with political independence achieved, our nation remained unduly subservient to the literature and the scholarship of our mother country. It was one thing to give unqualified allegiance to the great poets and thinkers whose fame was the inheritance of Americans no less than of Englishmen; it was quite another thing to look across the seas for every fresh inspiration, to be doubtful of our own powers and self-deprecatory in all matters of intellectual achievement, to remain uncertain concerning the value of our own work until it had received the seal of transatlantic approval. One cannot read very far in the literature produced by the first half century of our national life without discovering this to have been the prevailing attitude, and the more widely we extend the inquiry the deeper becomes this impression. As Professor Lounsbury says, "It requires a painful and penitential examination of the reviews of the period to comprehend the utter abasement of mind with which the men of that day accepted the foreign estimate upon works written here, which had been read by themselves, but which it was clear had not been read by the critics whose opinions they echoed." What was thus true in the field of literary criticism was true in almost equal measure in the field of scholarship, and it was evident that our political emancipation had still left us intellectually in leading strings. One lesson of national self-reliance we had already learned; another lesson, possibly the more important of the two, remained thus far unmastered, and almost unattempted.

That lesson was to be enforced by the man whose life and teachings we have recently been commemorating in this the centenary anniversary of his birth.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.