More on the Scholar

Sometimes I will be sitting in this literary criticism class, listening to all the discussion that is going on around me about how poetry can improve society and how some poet, some true poet will be able to express to the world what true Beauty and Art truly are, and I want to get out of my seat and proclaim, "What are we really talking about here? Why is this so important? What really is this Poetry (with a capital P) we are tossing around so effortlessly? What is Beauty (with a captial B)?" I want to scream these things, because I want to know them. I get the feeling that we discuss these essays to critique the authors' arguments and style, but I tend to want to know the philosophy behind the concepts. I want to understand the the Transcendentalists were trying to understand. I want to try to comprehend their thoughts.

So I tried to do this with this particular Emerson essay. I think he was much more clear and practical and easy to understand in this essay than in "The Poet." Emerson tries to describe his philosophy when he writes:

"The astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary motion...The ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact; one after another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on for ever to animate the last fibre of organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight."

I think I understand that he is saying we can conceive of abstractions by understanding that the concrete, testable, tangible examples of such abstractions are, in fact, examples of them. If we can separate the two, then we can say that our minds--and our minds only-- can conceive of abstractions. Then Emerson goes on to say that the school-boy, the scholar can then preceive Nature and realize that "he and it proceed from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul? -- A thought too bold, -- a dream too wild."

I love that Emerson knows his thoughts are "too bold" and "too wild" but he proposes them anyway because, well, what if...? In my preceptions of his explanations, I think he is saying that the abstract stuff binds us together with Nature. The stuff that makes a flower a flower and a human a human are only examples of the abstract, and maybe that abstract is Beauty or respiration or knowledge or just life, and then that, in turn, is the soul. The Root is the soul, and the soul connects everything. (I swear I'm not taking drugs as I write this...)

Then Emerson writes that this realization is "the beauty of [the scholar's] own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, 'Know thyself,' and the modern precept, 'Study nature,' become at last one maxim." Emerson is saying that if we do not know Nature, then we do not know ourselves. at first, I find this argument absurd because nature and humankind seem to be two completely separate things, but if we truly are connected in our most organic form, in how were bound by the abstractions of ourselves, then maybe this makes sense.

I know, Transcendentalism is completely egotistical if we really believe that we can be completely enlightened and understand the infinite wisdom of the universe soley through our minds, but isnt that how it goes? How else are we going to understand our purpose in this thing called "Life"? Is God going to reveal His mysteries to us? Well if He does, then how does He do it? Through our minds, of course! We are "Man Thinking." We are naturally thinking individuals. This is how we survive and thrive. This is what sets us apart from animals and nature, yet, it is also what brings us back to them. How else are we going to understand our situation? We think, therefore we are. We think so much that we start to understand abstractions of this world, and then we realize it is those abstractions that bind all of creation together. Particularly, it is The Abstraction that binds all of creation together. God.