The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson

My first reading assignment in English 101 was to read the first half of The American Scholar by  Ralph Waldo Emerson.  English is not my best subject, and I had difficulty understanding what Emerson was trying to say in the beginning of the passage.   I believe Emerson is trying to convince students to have their own way of thinking, to dig deep and find the creativeness inside them, instead of conforming to mankind's thoughts.  Emerson stated that the gods "divided Man into men"(The American Scholar, paragraph 4), which suggests that all mankind has branched from one man, one mind, and one way of thinking.  "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views..." (paragraph 15) It suggests that human minds are not much different from one another, but we can break free from that by taking what we are given and creating our own new ideas.  I found a few things difficult, one of them being paragraph 14.  "Or, might I say, it depends on how far the process had gone, of transmuting life into truth.  In proportion to the completeness of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the product be."  I think I wrongly interpreted this passage, leading to a confusion.