Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson. (1803–1882). Essays and English Traits . Vol. 5, pp. 5-15 of The Harvard Classics Emerson was included in Dr. Eliot's recent selection of the world's ten greatest educators of all time. Here the great thinker discusses this force within man that makes him a scholar. (Emerson delivers "American Scholar" lecture, Aug. 31, 1837.) The American Scholar An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 M R. P RESIDENT AND G ENTLEMEN: I greet you on the recommencement of our literary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the Troubadours; nor for the advancement of science, like our contemporaries in the British and European capitals. Thus far our holiday has been s