Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to a speech given by this person as "our intellectual Declaration of Independence."
Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837 as "our intellectual Declaration of Independence.? Emerson, a philosopher and author born in Boston on May 25, 1803, gave the speech, entitled ?The American Scholar,? to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard. It called for an indigenous national culture and defined the functions of the intellectual in the light of Transcendentalism. He urged the mottoes: ?Know Thyself? and ?Study Nature.? In 1838 Emerson?s address to the Harvard Divinity School criticized orthodox Christianity and led to accusations that he was an atheist. It was 30 years before he was invited again to speak at Harvard. He died on April 27, 1882.
