Seven Kinds of Wisdom

Gustav Klimt, The Park, 1910

Emerson's staring point for Islam was a book called the Akhlak I-Jalaly, translated by W.F. Thompson as The Practical Philosophy of the Muhammedan People, published in London in 1839.

It enumerates seven kinds of wisdom: penetration, quickness of intellect, clearness of understanding, facility of acquirement, propriety of discrimination, retention, recollection.  (406)

Emerson particularly liked the book's commitment to learning and teaching: its conclusion says: "Let it be the object of your constant endeavor to instruct both others and yourself."

(from Robert Richardson's Emerson biography)