“The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be a university of knowledges. If there be one lesson more than another, which should pierce his ear, it is, The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Just 61 years after the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, Ralph Waldo Emerson offered a declaration of his own urging Americans to stop being “parrot[s] of other men’s thinking.”

The groundbreaking speech, later titled The American Scholar, is a treasure trove of autodidactic insight. If you’ve never read it, I heartily suggest that you take a look at the complete manuscript online, print out a copy, and get your highlighter ready. This one is a classic!

In his speech, Emerson draws attention to three ways that people can become independent thinkers and free themselves from over-reliance upon the ideas of others. In a nutshell, we must: learn from nature, study the past, and become people of action.

Learn from Nature

Emerson suggests that we need to learn from nature not simply for its own sake, but because learning about nature helps us understand ourselves:

“Its beauty is the beauty of his 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.”

As a bookworm, this is something that I didn’t understand for years. But, as I’ve recently ventured out to hike in the woods, plant a garden, and ride my bicycle, I have found that my understanding of myself and other concepts has increased in ways that simply weren’t possible from spending hours in front of a computer screen or curled up with a book. [click to continue…]

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