I am reading Cornel West’s The American Evasion of Philosophy and while he self-admittedly has a political position to make with his book, his opening section shows a much more complete portrait of Emerson’s thought than either the Self-Reliance or American Scholar essay shows. He’s both more thoughtful and more appalling than those essays show…

He has some intriguing insights:

“Of the two great parties, which, at this hour, almost share the nation between them, I should say, that, one has the best cause and the other contains the best men.” [That sums up in a simplistic way my feeling about our current two political parties although I don’t have that particular distinction between them…]

“Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.”

“In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.”

“What arguments, what eloquence can avail against the power of that one word niggers? The man of the world annihilates the whole combined force of all the anti-slavery societies of the world by pronouncing it.”

He also has statements that have some merit but then go overboard (which is true, in my opinion, of much of The American Scholar and Self-Reliance essays taken as wholes):

“I see a good in such emphatic and universal calamity as the times [The Panic of 1837] bring, that they dissatisfy me with society…. Society has played out its last stake; it is check-mated. Young men have no hope. Adults stand like day laborers in the streets. None calleth us to labor… the present generation is bankrupt of principles and hope, as of property.”

And yet, other of his observations are appalling:

“The worst of charity, is, that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.”

“European, Moor, Tartar, African: Nature has plainly assigned different degrees of intellect to these different races, and the barriers between are insurmountable. This inequality is an indication that some should lead, and some should serve…. I saw ten, twenty, a hundred large lipped, lowbrowed black men in the streets who, except in the mere matter of language, did not exceed the sagacity of the elephant. Now is it true that these were created superior to this wise animal, and designed to control it? And in comparison with the highest orders of men, the Africans will stand so low as to make the difference which subsists between themselves & the sagacious beasts inconsiderable. It follows from this, that this is a distinction which cannot be much insisted on.”

“The Negro must be very old & belongs, one would say, to the fossil formations. What right has he to be intruding into the late & civil daylight of this dynasty of the Caucasians & Saxons? It is plain that so inferior a race must perish shortly like the poor Indians. Sarah Clarke said, “The Indians perish because there is no place for them.” That is the very fact of their inferiority. There is always place for the superior. Yet pity for these was needed, it seems, for the education of this generation in ethics. Our good world cannot learn the beauty of love in narrow circles & at home in the immense Heart, but must be stimulated by somewhat foreign & monstrous, by the simular man of Ethiopia.”

“I think it cannot be maintained by any candid person that the African race have ever occupied or do promise ever to occupy any very high place in the human family. Their present condition is the strongest proof that they cannot. The Irish cannot; the American Indian cannot; the Chinese cannot. Before the energy of the Caucasian race all the other races have quailed and done obeisance.”