Rafa Racho

Essay Module 3

From the reading “Uses of Great Men” Emerson sees great men as those who

are great in a particular field. “I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of

thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty” From here we can

understand that those who are great men are those who have that sort of ability, but

phrases it in a way that they need not be born that way, or have natural talent, but they

are great so long as they have reached that point. He says it plainly from the quote “He

has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light and in large relations.” However

great men cannot simply be perfect at everything as they must also be flawed so that

those who are not great can relate to them and, in some sense, strive to be like them.

“But he must be related to us, and our life receive from him some promise of

explanation.” The idea of receiving a promise of explanation is that we can in some

sense understand them. If a man is simply good at everything and those who are not do

not understand how, then that person cannot be idealized as we cannot identify with

them. “One man answers some question which none of his contemporaries put, and is

isolated.” A great man, as explained by Emerson, is not just one who excels in their

field, but one who inspires others as well. “What is good is effective, generative; makes

for itself room, food and allies.”

One last point I want to bring up about the idea of great men is that the term

“heroes” is also brought up. While great men are found in real life, the term heroes is

generally reserved for works of fiction, but in that sense, these definitions apply to them
as well. Heroes are those characters that are great at something, but are not infallible.

They are usually flawed, imperfect, or have some kind of weakness that they must

overcome on their journey. As for the idea of inspiration, the ones they inspire are the

ones learning their story. If the story is in a book, and the reader is the one learning the

tale, then the hero would have then accomplished the last idea of being a great man,

and inspired the one who read their story.

For the term “delegated or representative quality” it is an important part of the

essay as it is a major part of determining a great man. Great men are not necessarily

determined as a whole but rather by certain aspects of them that are considered to

make them great, and those aspects are the representative or delegated qualities.

Emerson says as such himself from the line “But at last we shall cease to look in men

for completeness, and shall content ourselves with their social and delegated quality.”

For the quote of Emmerson "We have never come at the true and best benefit of

any genius so long as we believe him an original force. In the moment when he ceases

to help us as a cause, he begins to help us more as an effect. Then he appears as an

exponent of a vaster mind and will. The opaque self becomes transparent with the light

of the First Cause." I believe that it is best to break it down one line at a time.

For the first line, I believe that the idea is that no genius or great man is the first

and only pioneer of his own field. From what I understand the quote to mean is that we

can only truly appreciate them the most if we realize that what they do that is great is

built at least in some ways off of the work of other geniuses.

The next line is a bit more interesting but also slightly more straightforward. The

idea of a genius being a cause is the idea of why they can be considered as such to
begin with. The cause that they are is the work that they have done. As for how they are

to become an effect, it goes back to the idea of inspiration. To build off of the first line

from the quote, the one who understands that a great man stands on the shoulders of

other great men, can now be elevated even higher and become inspired to reach ever

further in the pursuit of perfection in their field.

As for the last two sentences, I felt it best to analyze them together as they are

essentially saying the same thing. While the idea of the genius becoming even vaster

from the third sentence of the quote initially seems that it contradicts my initial points of

him seeming more human, I believe that it actually enforces those ideas. The “vaster

mind and will” refers not just to the individual themself but rather to the collection of

ideas from them as well as the geniuses prior to them. That’s why the next sentence

goes back to the idea of “The First Cause” after having discussed the idea of the initial

genius as a cause, because now it is not simply the knowledge of one person that is

being drawn from, but that of many.