Today in class you had us read over the first couple paragraphs of this essay by Emerson, and though the process was slow going, and it took a little bit of work outside of class to understand what in the world he was talking about. But alas, this is what I've got. Emerson is delivering a speech to a large group of scholars at a college. His start by telling a story, a "fable" he calls it, about how, at one point in time, all of humanity had been able to work together, all contributing to the greater good. However, when different people limit their focus and do only what they do (i.e. farmer, mechanic, etc.), they limit the capabilities of humanity as a whole. He points out the very scholars in front of him as the "man thinking," a state where the scholars can make true progress, and not just "parrot" the conclusions of others.
The part from I to II is a bit more difficult. It seems to stress the importance of nature to the scholars. And how nature can be used by the scholars to make true progress in the world. Emerson lists certain examples of this, such as how he use of geometry in the aspect of nature can reveal the measure of planetary motion. Without a clear grasp on nature and what it means in the world of science, scholars are really nothing important, for they can make no more progress than what has been discovered before them. Now nature isn't the only important thing, but it is significant to say that Emerson specifically decided to use it first.
Emerson says clearly that nature is the most important of the influences on the scholar. He tries to make it clear that nature and the mind are aspects of each other -- one reflecting the other. Though he gives many examples, which can be confusing, his main point is that everything that you sense and everything that you think are you greatest influences. The thinking part makes order of the seeming chaos that the creature senses. All that raw information enters the mind, and the mind applies rules that establish connections between each of these 'refractory' facts. Mankind has been doing this for a long time; therefore, when we can find it, the thoughts of minds that have existed in the past, who had been trying to establish these rules of order, can help us to see further. When we understand Copernicus idea that the earth is not the center of the universe, we can begin to see how the planets move around the sun, and how the sun finds its way around the center of the galaxy, and so on. In other words the scholar builds on the thoughts of others as well as on his own observations of nature. Now, we are talking about the value of action. Keep thinking, this man is very interesting.
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