Ralph Waldo Emerson challenges society. He challenges both the society of his day and the society of our day. What do we classify or identify ourselves as? Is our identity found in what we do? He believes it shouldn't be. He believes we should be Man Thinking, not just thinking about what we are told to think about.
We should be thinking for ourselves, asking questions and finding answers for ourselves. We shouldn't just take everything we're told at face value. We should dig deeper and learn things from our own experiences.
One of the biggest/most well known statements from this speech is "Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst."
Books have a use and are good to an extent. We should not, however just believe everything we read, he's saying. We need to take the books we are given and challenge them to see if they hold up to be true. If we find that they don't, then we need to rewrite them. He even makes a point that each generation has it's new writers who make new books. They are no use, though, if they just reiterate and say the exact same thing as what's been stated for generations upon generations, unless they still are true. We just need to be learning for ourselves.
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