AN UNIVERSITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGES

Emerson

Queen Victoria ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom on the 20^th June 1837.  A New Age had begun. Two months later on the 31^st August 1837 a young Ralf Waldo Emerson delivered a lecture to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, Massachusetts, asserting the emancipation of “The American Scholar” In the speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States and urged Americans to create a writing style all their own and free from Europe. A new age indeed. Emerson stated, inter alia:

Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political movement, is, the new importance given to the single person. Every thing that tends to insulate the individual, — to surround him with barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state; — tends to true union as well as greatness. Help must come from the bosom alone. 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 an 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.

Emerson referenced Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (who had died 10 years earlier) a Swiss educationalist and surgeon who wrote:

Pestalozzi

"The ideal system of liberty, also, to which Rousseau imparted fresh animation, increased in me the visionary desire for a more extended sphere of activity, in which I might promote the welfare and happiness of the people. Juvenile ideas as to what it was necessary and possible to do in this respect in my native town, induced me to abandon the clerical profession, to which I had formerly learned, and for which I had been destined, and caused the thought to spring up within me, that it might be possible, by the study of the law, to find a career that would be likely to procure for me, sooner or later, the opportunity and means of exercising an active influence on the civil condition of my native town, and even of my native land.”

How does “"I learned that no man in God's wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man." square with "The ideal system of liberty…increased in me the visionary desire for a more extended sphere of activity, in which I might promote the welfare and happiness of the people.”  and “…it might be possible, by the study of the law, to find a career that would be likely to procure for me, sooner or later, the opportunity and means of exercising an active influence on the civil condition of my native town, and even of my native land”.

Do these sentiments, prompted by the ideal system of liberty, direct one to suppose they would lead to “the new importance given to the single person”, and encourage that person to become ‘an university of all knowledges’?

Some forty years later, beginning as early as the summer of 1871 or in the spring of 1872, Emerson started having memory problems^[ and suffered from aphasia. By the end of the decade, he forgot his own name at times and, when anyone asked how he felt, he responded, "Quite well; I have lost my mental faculties, but am perfectly well".  The problems with his memory had become embarrassing to Emerson and he ceased his public appearances by 1879. As Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "Emerson is afraid to trust himself in society much, on account of the failure of his memory and the great difficulty he finds in getting the words he wants. It is painful to witness his embarrassment at times".

The recommended treatment for aphasia is:

•    Exercising regularly

•    Eating a healthy diet

•    Keeping alcohol consumption low and avoiding tobacco use

•    Controlling blood pressure

Has anything changed in the last 178 years?