The American Scholar - RWE

“It is one of those fables, which, out of an unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.
The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man,--present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state, these functions are parceled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. 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, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,--a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. “

“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. “

“Success treads on every right step. For the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns, that in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated. “

“Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.”

Wordsworth – “We come into the world trailing clouds of glory. “

The Transcendentalists brought the thought of us and everything coming from the perfect existence from the Romantics and on through history.
Everything is a remembrance of what we already know. We do not learn, we remember.
Emerson – He is Man Thinking.

What is Man Thinking?
It is the collaborative learning, thinking, (still individual but working towards the center) and nature and working as a whole where you are working as the hand, eye, or foot of the whole instead of the “parrot of other man's thinking”....
Make a work of art that is timeless. That is why Emerson calls for a book or piece of art that is “pure”.

Why do we rely on this? Why do we need someone to tell us how to think, what to do, even when they tell us not to do so?
I think they know it is better to walk your own path, but know that there are many who will not, so they take into their essays both of these thoughts and thus grapple with contradicting themes throughout what they are talking about.