Review of The American Scholar
...hat he has said: “we have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, and tame.… Not so, brothers and friends—please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we shall speak our own minds.” The influence of Emerson is deep. Emerson believed that being a unit, it is crucial to develop the individuals, or else it is “the chief disgrace in the world.” It is no doubt that this point of view is also applicable today. For example, these days, many people pursue the famous products without thinking that whether they really need. Sometimes, people only copy those excellent essays or something else. All these are obviously show us that we are prone to the situation as well as the early of the American scholars, loosing our own mind, our own sounds. It goes without saying that people can learn from other’s strong point to offset his (or her) weakness. Certainly, good things can be people’s model, guiding people and helping them absorb and change their knowing into a new one. Everyone living in the world have their own characters, so don’t chase other people’s mind but loosing the individual that belong to themselves. On the other hand, Emerson was the descendant of a long line of New England clergymen. That is to say, he was a transcendentalist. And Emerson was also a romantic influenced by the romantic English poets, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth and so on. His attitude could be readily found in his essays including this one “The American Scholar”. He said: “A man is related to all nature.” He also said: “Help must...