THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR Q: Discuss the duties and responsibilities of the American Scholar.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the sage of concord, the father of American Transcendentalism and the pioneer of the New England Renaissance, is regarded as one of the leading American scholars, philosophers thinkers, authors and, above all, a great humanitarian figure who dreams of a better world and hopes for a brighter future for mankind. His popular essay The American Scholar is in fact, a famous address delivered in a meeting organized by the Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard University near Cambridge, USA on August 31, 1837. In this essay, Emerson designs an ideal scholar suggesting his true characteristics, his proper education, his perfect duties and responsibilities and his vital role and thereby he wants to bring about a revolutionary change in the concept of art, literature, thinking and action of a free nation.

                    Emerson wants that the American scholar or a true ideal scholar must come out from the Cocoon of the old concept of dependence and mere thinking with this realization that-

“Out day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands draws to a close.” He must come up to the ideal of Man thinking as well as man doing. He must no longer be a mere thinker a parrot copying others and feeding himself with the harvest of other lands, but must be a man of free thinking, heroic mind courageous and creative spirit.

                     To make himself fit for bringing about change, the true intellectual should educate himself properly from three sources- Nature, book, and his own action (and experience). The American scholar should have developed in himself the belief of one man concept. Man divided into men has now lost his original genial power, his unity and uniformity and thereby he has lost his ideals and true path of universality and humanity. So do something for mankind, he should have an enlightened mind, a transcendentalist soul and a right representative of the world’s people. He should be inspired and cheered up and geared up with this confidence that “He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart” and it is he who can represent the whole of mankind properly.

                        The first and foremost duty of a true scholar is to acquire knowledge and wisdom. But he should not be a mere reader, the bookworm. He must not be a recluse, a valetudinarian imprisoning himself in so-called ivory tower. Rather he should come down to earth and join with men with his active mind and active hand to work pragmatically.

So, the scholar should not only think speculative and meditative but also to create and act actively with reason and rationality. Emerson inspires him to be a man of heroic action. To Emerson “Inaction is cowardice but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind”

                

                          The American scholar’s duty is to achieve self trust and self reliance. It is self trust that comprises all other virtues. Without self-confidence he can’t lead other people to action. His great responsibility is to study, observe, and guide men. Emerson rightly points out the duties and responsibilities of the American scholar thus-

“The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances”

Another duty of the American scholar is to make himself free and brave man so that he can act over coming all obstacles and failure. He must also free himself from all false notions of display and the greed for frame and cheap popularity. He may have initially to live a life of poverty and solitude but he must not be discouraged. He must boldly face the difficulties that come in his way and thus overcome them. He must free himself from all weakness and fear. Emerson again says boldly:-

“Free should the scholar be-free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom.”

To do his work without fear, he should guard against all evils and avoid procrastination, indecision and melancholy and Hamlet’s unhappiness.

               Another vital role of the scholar is to raise a revolution on literary taste and in intellectual and cultural movement when the old and the new stand side by side admit of the rich possibilities of the new era. With this great hope, he should wake men from degradation to their real individual dignity. His responsibility is to make efforts towards the up building the individual. Such Up building of a man is the enterprise of the world for splendor and expansion. Thus the American scholar can upgrade men and lead them to cultural movement with an optimistic outlook. Such a signal of movement Emerson can observe. He says-

“I read with soul joy of the auspicious signs of the coming days, as they glimmer already through poetry and art, through philosophy and science, through church and state” where the American scholar play his vital role.

              As the true father of the American transcendentalism, Emerson wants the ideal scholar to have a universal idea about man in whose soul the universe pervades and the divine illuminates. There is a mystic link between man and God and also Nature. This comic relation can unite all men into one man, making an ultimate bridge with the cosmos as well as and only then an ideal nation and happy world is possible to be made Emerson hopes-

“A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the divine soul which also inspires all men”

This sweet dream of Emerson for a better abode of mankind is only possible if the true scholar all over the world can inspire the world people for this great change.

              To conclude, we can say that The American Scholar is Emerson’s clarion call to revolt against the conversational old concept about an ideal scholar and to herald a new drawn of another renaissance in art, culture, literature and learning and a new millennium not only for the Americans but also for all mankind.