The American Scholar.

Emerson's argument in The American Scholar about American society still holds true today.
What Emerson was saying in Man Thinking is that people in today's society only focus on one thing--their thing. People don't think outside the box, they only know what they can or were taught to do. It's like we all have our own specific role in the world, and don't realize we have other purposes. In this quote, Emerson is getting at that point,"The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man,--present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all." American society can not be based on only one thing. People become so into their one thing ,they begin to look down on other people's "one thing. " It's just like joining a sport. Let's say, soccer. You spend your time on that one sport and then you forget or have no idea how to play softball.