From The American Scholar Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect?
They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite
Instead of a system. The one thing in the world of value is the active soul-the soul, free, sovereign, active. This every man is entitled to this every
man contains within him, although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates.
in this action it is genlus, not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence it is progressive. The book,
the college, the school of art, the Institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genlus. This is good, say they --Iet us hold by this. They
pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genlus always looks forward. The eyes of man are set in his forehead, nat in his hindhead.
Man hopes. Genius creates
(From "The American Scholar' by Ralph Waldo Emerson)
According to Emerson, what is a drawback of relying too much on books?
01. They have a short-lived effect on most scholars.
02. They purport to be objective and may skew facts.
3. They do not provide a person with a complete education.
04. They glorify past endeavors and may stifle future creativity.