What ideas do you gather about Emerson as a transcendentalist from the study of his essay “The American Scholar."

Question: What ideas do you gather about Emerson as a transcendentalist from the study of his essay “The American Scholar."

Or, Give your ideas about Emerson as a transcendentalist.

Or, What do you know about transcendentalism? Evaluate Emerson as a transcendentalist from your study in the essay, “The American Scholar.”

Answer: Transcendentalism originated from Romanticism and post-Kantian idealism which influenced English Romantic poets like Coleridge, Wordsworth and Keats. In America, it was a New England movement which flourished from 1835 to 1860. Emerson was the leader of the transcendental movement in America.

Transcendentalism has been variously interpreted and sometimes misinterpreted. It is a belief in the existence of a divine world beyond and above the world of the senses. It cannot be known by reason and rational analysis.

Emerson's conception of Nature is the basis of his idea of transcendentalism. The divine is the over-soul and the external world is but the raiment of the Divine. Man can know the divine and can ultimately merge with it, through the agency of Nature.

Emerson's "Nature" is regarded as the Bible of transcendentalism. In it, he states his basic concepts of Man, Nature and God. He has tried to locate the man in relation to Nature on the one hand, and God on the other. He places man at the centre of Nature and thinks that man can fulfil his destiny and realise his ends through Nature.

The over-soul is the ground of man's existence. “The foundations of man are not in matter, but in spirit,” and “because of the soul's participation in the Divine substance there is no limit to the possibilities in man's life". Emerson calls this the infinitude of the private man. Man's essential self is capable of transcending the finitude of existence and of becoming one with the infinite.

Traces of transcendentalism thoughts are also perceivable in Emerson's essay “The American Scholar” though it is not his principal aim to expound his ideas through it. The first and foremost influence that operates on the scholar is Nature. The scholar should open out his soul to nature so that her influence can flow into him and can mould his soul. The scholar will thus become aware of his oneness with Nature. He will be conscious that his soul merges with the soul of Nature, and that both nature and himself are derived from the same source-the Divine which is immanent through both Nature and man. He shall see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part by part. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. So much as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess.

When the scholar studies the phenomena of Nature, he discovers a similarity between them and his own mind, because both proceed from one root, that is, the soul of his soul. He studies the phenomena of Nature and realises that there is never a beginning, never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of the web of God. It is always a circular power, which perpetually returns to itself. It resembles the scholar's own spirit which is without beginning, without end. It is so entire, so boundless. The young, inexperienced mind does not know about all this. Such a mind first thinks that everything is individual, or that everything has a separate existence of its own. He gradually joins things; he joins two things first, then some more, then thousands. In this way, he discovers that all things have the same nature, that there is essential unity behind the apparent diversity of things, and that there is a law which unifies all the varied phenomena of things. To quote Emerson, "What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never can find-so entire, so boundless. For too as her splendours shine, system on the system, shooting like rays, upward, downward, without the centre, without circumference-in the mass and in the particle.” Nature hastens to render an account of herself to the mind. Classification begins. To the young mind, everything is individual and stands by itself.

Emerson's transcendentalist ideas are an important ingredient of his essay, "The American Scholar” because they constitute a new conception. The American Scholar, or for that matter, any scholar, should be conscious of the transcendental dimension of his soul or spirit. He can achieve his high ideal in life only through divine inspiration and help. If the scholar's soul is open to the influences of nature he can realise his transcendental statue of himself and can achieve his purpose which is to realise Cultural Revolution.

Emerson expresses his ideas about the transcendental nature of the human soul in a language which can be termed lofty. It borders on poetry. His effusions about the relationships between Nature and the individual human soul are of the nature of the sublime and tend to affect a man's mind with an inspiration of similar sublimity. Such expressions of a philosophical doctrine like transcendentalism are indeed rare in American literature, or it may be said, the literature of the world.