Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson's most famous address described his ideal of "The American Scholar" - "man thinking" in America. It also described the ideal by which he patterned his own life. That he wished to become an ideal scholar is clear, but that he wished to, and did become a representative American is less generally recognized. Judging him by his own standards, "Let us" (to use his own words) "see him in his school, and consider him in reference to the main influences he receives."

Upon Emerson, as upon the mind of his imaginary scholar, the first influence to be exerted was that of nature. "Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, Night and her stars.... Every day, men and women, conversing - beholding and beholden." The term "nature" includes not only the sun and the stars, or wild nature, but human nature - the whole environment of man. Born as he was in the middle of the city of Boston, the human environment acted upon Emerson first. The America in which he lived exerted the most significant influence upon both his life and his writing.

To think of Emerson as one of the New England group of writers who flourished a century ago is to misrepresent him at the start. He was born to that group, but grew beyond it. By experience and by sympathy, he became a citizen of a larger America. Lowell declared that two men, Lincoln and Emerson, stood preeminent as products of American democracy. Because modern Americans have been unwilling to couple Emerson with Lincoln, they have too often overlooked the fact that Emerson was wholly a product of democracy. Mr. James Truslow Adams, who rather distrusts Emerson, yet recognizes that "in no other author can we get so close to the whole of the American spirit."

To begin with, a long established myth must be destroyed. It has been repeated so often that Emerson was descended from seven generations of Puritan ministers that men have come to believe the statement literally. But only by a careful handpicking of the branches of his family tree can the assertion be justified, as Holmes, who originated it, cheerfully admitted. Emerson's mother was the daughter of a "cooper and distiller," and his maternal ancestors were largely innocent of ministerial proclivities. In the direct line of his paternal descent a merchant and a baker intrude. The only generalization that can be made to include all his ancestors is that they were Americans for seven generations and that they shared between them almost all the experiences common to American pioneers.

Thomas Emerson, the baker, emigrated to New England in 1635, obtained a grant of land, and founded the family. His son, the Reverend Joseph Emerson, barely escaped with his life when the town of Mendon was destroyed by the Indians. His son, Edward Emerson, was a merchant. His grandson, Ralph Waldo's grandfather, William Emerson of Concord, died of camp fever while serving as chaplain in the patriot army of the Revolution. Lastly, the Reverend William Emerson of Boston, besides serving as chaplain of the Massachusetts Senate, delivered the official Fourth of July oration in Boston in 1802, the year before his son Ralph Waldo was born. In conversation with Bret Harte in 1872, Emerson could argue with justice that he "spoke also from Pilgrim experience."