aims to do his stint of the joint work. The fable implies that the individual to possess himself must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But unfortunately this original unit has been so distributed to multitudes that it is spilled into drops and cannot be gathered. In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is man thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking. In this view of him, as man thinking, the theory of his office is contained."47 "The man of genius (the scholar) should occupy the whole space between God and pure mind and the multitude of uneducated men. He must draw from the infinite reason on one side, and he must penetrate into the heart and sense of the crowd on the other. At one pole is Reason, at the other is Common Sense. If he be defective at either stream, his philosophy will seem low and utilitarian or it will appear too vague and indefinite for the uses of life."48 How happily this expresses Emerson's own practical idealism, which has flowered in this generation into such movements as Christian Science, Divine Science, and New Thought, and in individuals like Elbert Hubbard, Dr. Frank Crane, Arnold Bennett, and the American Magazine, all exponents of an everyday Utopia! If the scholar is to be man thinking, then his education must be as broad as life itself. It must embrace all experience, investigation of Nature, study of the past through books, and association with the present through action. He must know nature, "Since in knowing her he knows himself"49 He must regard books, records of the past, as sources of inspiration merely. They are to be used judiciously, lest they warp him out of his own orbit, for the one thing of value in the world. is the active soul. 47 American Scholar, v. 1, p. 82. 48 Literary Ethics, v. 1, p. 182. 49 The Scholar, v. p. 87. "Books are for the scholar's idle time. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to spend in other men's transcripts of their reading."50 Though action with a scholar may be subordinate it is essential. "A great soul will be strong to live as well as strong to think."51 "The true scholar grudges every opportunity for action passed by as a loss of power. It is the raw material out of which the intellect moulds its splendid products."52 "The scholar feels that the richest romance, the noblest fiction that was ever woven, the heart and soul of beauty lies enclosed in human life."53 Weaving in the colors of the old design, Emerson emphasizes the independence of the scholar. "Brave must he be and free. It becomes him to feel all confidence in himself and to defer never to popular cry. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse and the conclusions of history."54 "The scholar must plant himself indomitably on his instincts and there abide." For "Is not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be a unit, not to be reckoned one character, not to yield the peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand of the party, and our opinion predicated geographically as the north or the south ?”55 Moreover, the scholar must be intellectually self-reliant as well as morally. "The scholar must be independent, not in bondage to Greece or Rome, the unities of Aristotle, nor the three kings of Cologne, nor the college of the Sorbonne, nor the Edinburgh Review. Now that we are here we shall put our own interpretation on things, and our own things for intepretation."56 50 Scholar, v. 1, p. 91. 51 Ibid. p. 99. 52 Ibid, p. 96. 53 Literary Ethics, vol. 1, p. 157. 54 Scholar, v. 1, p. 102. 55 Ibid, p. 115. 56 Literary Ethics, v. 1, p. 160. These, then, are the lineaments of the scholar. "He is priest of that thought which establishes the world."57 He guards sacredly and fearlessly his peculiar force which is like unto that which gives form to the universe. To fulfill his high calling, he submits to an all inclusive culture from nature, books and active affairs. He is educated that he may illumine others. The liberality of view evident in any subject which Emerson treats, makes the formulation of a method, or foundation of a school impossible. This may be disappointing to those who like manuals and guide books, but to those of initiative, this manner of suggestion, rather than dictation, is most welcome. In his discussion of education, Emerson seeks to arouse the reader's mind to action rather than to satisfy it with definite dogmas. Though he is idealistic and general, he is never visionary or impractical. He says: "The two points in a boy's training are to keep his 'naturel' and to train off all but that; to keep his 'naturel,' but to stop off his uproar, fooling and horseplay; to keep his nature and arm it with knowledge in the direction in which it points.”58 Moreover, there are two ways of developing this "naturel," namely, through inspiration and through drill. These are not incompatible "For if enthusiasm entrances the boy, it leads him now into deserts, now into cities, the fool of an idea; and will lead him at last into the illustrious society of the lovers of truth." Moreover, drill is necessary for "Accuracy is essential to beauty. The very definition of intellect is Aristotle's 'that by which we know terms or boundaries.' Give a boy accurate perceptions. Teach him the difference between the similar and the same. Make him call things by their right names. Pardon in him no blunder. It is better to teach the child arithmetic and Latin grammar than rhetoric and moral philosophy, because the former require exactitude of performance . . . and power of performance is worth more than 58 Education, v. 10, p. 145. 57 Method of Nature, v. 1, p. 192. mere knowledge. He can learn anything which is important to him now, that power to learn is secured."59 While modern psychology may not agree with Emerson on the point of "formal discipline"6", yet his idea that power, the development of capacity, should be the ultimate end of education, is certainly borne out in the project teaching of today. Emerson brings out this same idea, when he sees the value of activities voluntarily selected by the boy. Football, Cricket, Archery, Swimming, Skating, Climbing and Fencing are lessons in the art of power, which it is the boy's main business to learn."61 Again he says: "This unmanliness is the result of our self-education, teaching the youth Latin and metaphysics and history, and neglecting to give him the rough training of a boy, allowing him to skulk from the game of ball and skates and whatever else would lead him, and keep him on equal terms with boys, so that he can meet them as an equal, and lead in his turn."62 "The most part of education is conducted in the nursery and the playground, in fights, in frolics, in business and in politics."63 If the aim of education is power, the agencies of education are various and often chosen through a process of natural selection, which weaves in the old design of magnetism or affinity. "Books are good only so far as the boy is ready for them. You send your boys to the school master, but 'tis the school boys that educate him. You send your boy to the Latin class, but much of his tuition comes on the way to school from the shop windows. You like the strict rules and long terms, and he finds his best leading in a by-way of his own."64 "I like boys, masters of the playground and of the school, boys who have the same liberal ticket of admission to all shops, factories, armories, town meetings, caucuses, mobs and target shootings, as flies have, quite unsuspected, coming in as naturally as the janitor, known to have no money in their pockets, 59 Education, v. 10, p. 147. 60 cf. Thorndike: Principles of Teaching, chap. 15. 61 Education, v. 10, p. 143. 62 Eloquence, v. 8, p. 128. but seeing the inside of the show, hearing all the sides. There are no secrets from them, they know everything that befalls in the fire company, the merits of every engine and of every man at the brakes. They are only there for fun and not knowing that they are at school, in the court house or cattle show, quite as much and more than they were an hour ago in the arithmetic class."65 Elsewhere Emerson makes his own confession: "The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional training in education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at Latin school. What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess at the time of receiving a thought of its comparative value, and education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism which is sure to select what belongs to it."66 If education must take into consideration this natural magnetism, so must parents hold sacred the bias of their child. "Nature when she sends a new mind into the world, fills it beforehand with a desire for that which she wishes it to know and do. A low self love in the parent desires that his child shall repeat his character and fortune, an expectation which the child, if justice is done him, will nobly disappoint! Cannot we let people be themselves? Why try to make another man like you? One's enough. We sacrifice the genius of the child, the unknown possibilities of his nature, to a neat and safe conformity as the Turks whitewash the costly Mosaics of ancient art which the Greeks left on their temple walls. Rather let us have men whose manhood is only the continuation of their boyhood, natural characters still."67 Again Emerson says: "I believe that our own experience instructs us that the secret of education lies in respecting people. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. But I hear the outcry which replies to this suggestion. 65 Education, v. 10, p. 143. 66 Spiritual Laws, v. 2, p. 133. 67 Education, v. 10, p. 137-8. |