"The American Scholar" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

This essay or more accurately this Oration is very useful in understanding the role of the scholar and principally what a scholar deals with. Emerson in the begging of the oration states some definition about man and scholar: "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." (Emerson, 295). " ... the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, …

…art, and persuade men by the cheerful serenity of their carrying the matter, that this thing which they do, is the apple which the ages have desired to pluck, now at last ripe, and inviting nations to the harvest." (303-304). "The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future." (307). "The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant." (307).