American author, poet, and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson emerged as a distinguished member of the literary movement known as Transcendentalism in the mid-19th Century. The writings of Emerson enchanted readers with refreshing reflections on the individual, natural facts, and intellectual self-reliance. Emerson’s 1837 speech, “The American Scholar,” was delivered at Harvard College’s chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and included some of his greatest ideas. In his rousing address, Emerson implored the gentlemen of Harvard to think about the country and the world around them in a manner that strayed from their predisposed methods of learning—which, among other things, saw them failing to look past the books they encountered in school. Emerson challenged the way one should study an element of life that is never waning in its power to influence us: nature. Another theme central to Emerson’s speech was that of action, in how a scholar is to bring their pursuits into the world. The significance of Emerson’s view of nature and action can be judged from its applicability to the works of authors across entire disciplines. This paper will explore two works with this notion in mind, as well as provide an analysis of whether or not I have been an ideal Emersonian Scholar through my early studies in college.

The first source was a personal favorite of those encountered in the Humanities 102 course. Lady Montagu’s Letters From Turkey was published posthumously in 1725, and featured the accounts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as she visited a world entirely different from her own. A member of England’s high society, Lady Montagu encountered a trove of new experiences in this foreign land, which included Turkish Baths, exotic wildlife, foreign tongues, and an Islamic society. It is readily clear that Lady Montagu treated the Turkish and their customs with the utmost of respect and reverence.

The first Emersonian principle as seen in “The American Scholar” that will be applied to Lady Montagu’s Letters From Turkeyis that of nature. In his speech, Emerson described nature in great depth, and, particularly, how it is beautiful: “Its beauty is the beauty of his [God’s] own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind.”1 In looking at Lady Montagu through the lens of this passage, a clear correlation between these works can be seen. In her visit to the baths, Lady Montagu experienced a social phenomenon unlike anything she had ever before: everyone around her at that moment were in the nude. Quite the irony made itself immediately clear, for, as a clothed person in the bath, Lady Montagu was instantly the outsider. Lady Montagu wrote of the women in Letter 26, describing them as “all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any Beauty or defect conceal’d.”2 Lady Montagu connected the idea of nature and nakedness in this passage, and concluded that this state of being reveals a beauty of these women that is normally clothed. Emerson, similarly, connected nature’s beauty as to being that of God’s mind. According to the Christian faith, of which Emerson is quite knowledgeable, God created man and woman in a state of nakedness; a state of purity. Emerson applauds nature, a creation of God, as being beautiful and a manifestation of the mind of God. Both authors in Lady Montagu and Emerson credit nature as having inherent beauty, whether that be nature as a whole, or as a “state of nature” as written by Lady Montagu.

The next Emersonian quality that will be examined through Lady Montagu’s Letters From Turkey is that of action. In Emerson’s speech, he spoke to action as being essential to a scholar, for “Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never ripen into fruit.”3 Emerson found the power of searching and discovering information by looking at life itself: “Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town, ⎯ in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many 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.4 Emerson found that through these conversations with men and women, he could “learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech.”5 This action of speaking with people in order to learn more about the world, as well as that person, manifested in the conversations of Lady Montagu and the Islamic effendi in Letter 27. Lady Montagu conversed with the effendi in order to learn more about Islam, as well as to inform him of Christianity. This civil discourse is especially extraordinary, for the two concerned religions have historically been on either side of terrible bloodshed. Lady Montagu recounted what the effendi told her in this letter: “He told me if I understood Arabic, I should be very well pleased with reading the alcoran [Qur’an], which is so far from the nonsense we charge it with, that it is the purest morality, delivered in the very best language.”6 Through her discussion of Islam with the effendi, Lady Montagu was able to come to a conclusion that rejected the the prejudices of English Protestantism. Lady Montagu was also able to interact with the Arabic language, of which she dubbed “the very best language”. Lady Montagu attributed, as Emerson would put it, her “frank intercourse” with the effendi. Emerson revealed that this action of conversation could lead to a great learning, and Lady Montagu certainly did, moving beyond powerful preconceived prejudices.

Transitioning from the early-18th to the mid-19th Century, the next text to be examined with Emerson’s “The American Scholar” speech in mind is the 1848 political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. A result of intense research of historical class interactions, the Manifesto proposes an economic system to replace capitalism that distributes wealth and the mechanisms of industry among the people. Known as communism, the ideology would eventually inspire the masses of Tsarist Russia, resulting in a revolution that usurped the pre-existing monarchy in 1917. The work of Marx and Engels can certainly be examined through the lens of Emerson’s principles of nature and action.

In “The American Scholar,” Emerson awards immense power to nature: “The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, Night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.”7 Emerson provides that nature is a power whose existence always persists, and is preeminent in how it can mold our thoughts and minds. Emerson goes on to say that nature is a an all-encompassing, “circular power.”8 that is constantly “returning onto itself.”9 This implies that nature is an entity that, try as we might, can never truly be conquered; that no matter how powerful one may become, nature (death) always awaits them. Marx concurs with Emerson, for in The Communist Manifesto, Marx spoke of how the Bourgeoisie interacted with nature: “Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground.”10 Marx awarded nature similar recognition in its power in that it imposes “forces to man”. Marx argued that the Bourgeoisie has subverted these forces and created a whole host of technologies that have contributed to their modernization. Emerson concerned nature’s ability to influence the mind of man, for it is from nature that all thought develops. Marx stressed the success of the industrial man despite nature’s forces. Between Marx and Emerson, both writers held that nature is a power equipped with the ability to influence man on a profound scale.

The notion of action as seen in Emerson’s “The American Scholar” speech is readily seen in Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto. Emerson considered action insofar as man’s labor: “There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work.”11 Emerson shared an optimistic view of the labor structure, one that sees labor as a tool to be utilized by all of man. Marx would have vehemently opposed this position, for in the Manifesto, he asserted that laborers “live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.”12 Marx joins the idea of labor with his ever-critical beliefs of the capitalist system. Marx painted a picture—one that, perhaps, is more accurate than the one Emerson conceived—that the laborer is a downtrodden member of society whose life is controlled by the market. Emerson’s optimism and Marx’s cynicism clash spectacularly on the notion of labor when the two are compared. Emerson refers to tools of agriculture—the hoe and the spade—in his passage, while Marx’s school of thinking created a different symbol, one that utilized the joining of a tool of industry with a tool of agriculture: the hammer and sickle.

The guiding principles found in Emerson’s speech, “The American Scholar,” served as a lens through which I viewed works that reside in other disciplines. The travel writing of Lady Montagu and political rhetoric of Marx offered profound perspectives on the ideas of nature and action as formed by Emerson. Despite their differences in genre and audience, these Emersonian principles served as the binding for an entirely new understanding. This process has also made me reflect upon myself, posing the question of whether or not I have lived up to the scholar Emerson calls upon me to become. As I am currently in the green stages of my college education at Boston University, I believe that my time at the College of General Studies has encouraged me to pursue my potential as an Emersonian scholar. At orientation in the Summer of 2018, I recall being called “scholars” in lieu of “students” by Dean McKnight when we she spoke to us, and I recall wondering then what this distinction meant. I have come to understand that CGS operates for each and every enrolled member to own this title. Like many of my peers, my intended major of public relations doesn’t explicitly fall into any of the CGS disciplines—humanities, social sciences, and rhetoric—that I’ve visited in my first two semesters. What I have learned through this structure of learning is that these disciplines are not only preparing me to be an excellent student in the College of Communication, but also as a scholar in the Emersonian sense: a scholar of life. These courses which concern a holistic style of learning, are molding me into a well-rounded scholar, rather than a student with that merely learns one discipline. The truth is, while I may be considered an adult on paper, I still feel as if I have a lot to learn. I am very thankful that I’ve learned far beyond just one, singular field of study. I know now that when Dean McKnight called us scholars all those months ago, she knew our enrollment at CGS would involve a keen pursuit of this title.

Bibliography

Notes

1. Adam W. Sweeting, and Natalie J. McKnight, eds. Culture and Context: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Literature. Vol. II. Boston, MA: Boston University, 2019.

2. Lady Mary Mortley Montagu, Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e, Letter XXVI, Project Gutenberg, Accessed 2 Mar. 2019.

3. Adam W. Sweeting and Natalie J. McKnight, Culture and Context, 286.

4. Ibid., 287.

5. Ibid., 287.

6. Lady Mary Mortley Montagu, Letter XXVI.

7. Adam W. Sweeting and Natalie J. McKnight, Culture and Context, 284.

8. Ibid., 284.

9. Ibid., 284.

10. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm.

11. Adam W. Sweeting and Natalie J. McKnight, Culture and Context, 287.

12. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1.