...The trend of today is not very different from the 1800s when Ralph Waldo Emerson made this comment: Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given: forgetting that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only...

...own sight of principles." Mentioning favorite authorities of the orthodox school, Emerson continued, "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it...young men in libraries when they wrote these books." Coming out of the libraries, Emerson's new scholars "will walk on our own feet; we will work with our...

...is noble," he wrote, but their authority should not get in the way of youth's potential creativity. "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it...only young men in libraries when they wrote these books."1 How, then, should one study history? Almost as though presaging the new social history of...

...as Emerson sees it, in being influenced by a great European mind, but in feeling that one must be: "Men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty...Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote those books" (27). Oliver Wendell Holmes would later refer to this speech as "Our Intellectual Declaration...

...merely admiring them. In Emerson's eyes, great scholars go beyond an infatuation with great works: Books are written on it by thinkers, not by "Man thinking;"...principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing in their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that...

...this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking;...young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. (p. 57) Later, William Butler Yeats was to epitomize similar insights in a poem titled "The Scholars,"...

...that passage as coming from "The American Scholar." That reader would be wrong. What Emerson said was: "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it...young men in libraries, when they wrote these books." Although making much the same point with similar imagery, the first passage comes from a book of sermons...

...is man thinking and man farming, talent is merely a thinker and a farmer, belonging to a class which "set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles" ("The American Scholar," SE: 88). Emerson's preoccupation with the realm of Spirit (a term related...

...received this book, stands upon it and makes an eatery if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man thinking; by men ol talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of...

...that occurs when institutions turn them into books, books into libraries, libraries into conformities. "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it...young men in libraries, when they wrote these books." Books "are for nothing but to inspire." We should read them — especially books of history and natural...