Then Emerson, who seemed always to be seeking the final word, and to condense the whole of his thought into a sentence, added:
"Keep your mind open. Read Plato."
Those half-dozen words he uttered in the resonant tones of the platform; tones which came when he was deeply stirred and desired to stir his audience. They vibrated through the room as they vibrated through a great hall; tones which were meant to find their way, and did find their way, to the hearts of his hearers; an appeal to the emotions, to the conscience, to whatever there was in these thousands, or in the single individual, sympathetic to the speaker. I have never forgotten them. If I have not followed Emerson's advice as he meant it, or in full, I have followed it to a certain extent; desultorily, inadequately; and certainly with no settled purpose to become a Platonist, or even an Emersonian. But it had an effect and the effect has been permanent.
One other great thinker, Pascal, has given the same counsel; not in words, but by his perpetual example. You cannot read Pascal without seeing that he never states one side of a case, but always two sides. Even in matters of faith he keeps an open mind. In matters of science it is equally open; and in all other matters. To this day, it is disputed whether Pascal was a believer. He himself believed that he was, but he was a pupil of Montaigne, and Montaigne's motto, "Que sçais-je?" is inwoven in every sentence of Pascal's speculations upon matters of faith; and upon all les choses de l'esprit. So I put these two influences, Pascal and Emerson, side by side.
If this were the place, a parallel might be drawn. The Church, and for good cause, held Pascal for an enemy; and the Puritanism of New England, as well as orthodoxy in Old England and elsewhere, held Emerson for an enemy; also with good cause. Yet were they two of the most devout souls of all time. Why should the churches of France and of New England array against themselves the two finest minds of those two communities, centuries apart? Pascal's voice comes softly down the intervening generations—"Keep your mind open"—and Emerson's is the clear echo of Pascal's, as Pascal's was of Montaigne. Emerson, too, sat for a time at the feet of Montaigne, chose him as one of his "Representative Men," and said of Montaigne's Essays: "It seems to me as if I had myself written the book in some former life." Pascal had already said: "Ce n'est pas dans Montaigne mais dans moi que je trouve tout ce que j'y vois."
Emerson had other stimulating suggestions ready; his talk overflowed with them, yet was never didactic. It was as if the suggestions presented themselves first to him and then to you; as if he shared his thoughts with you; so far was he from the method of the pulpit. Some errand called him away. He took down a volume and put it into my hand, saying: "Some day I hope you will learn to value this writer. He has much to say, and he says it in almost the best English of his century. He is a Greek born out of due time"—a remark he has somewhere made about Winckelmann. It was Landor; a volume of the Imaginary Conversations. I read a dialogue there and then. I have read him ever since. I do not suppose anybody cares what I have read or not read. But I wish to give you Emerson's opinion; the advice he thought best for a boy studying law; and the effect of it upon the boy.
For he would not talk of what he thought unsuited to us two, or to me. In a reminiscence or two of his tour in England in 1846 or 1847 he mentioned a visit to Coleridge. I had read the Table Talk and the Biographia Literaria, and I asked Emerson to tell me what he and Coleridge had discussed. "No," he said, "it would not interest you." In the same way next morning when he took me to Walden through the woods, he began upon trees and squirrels and other forest-lore; then stopped and asked: "But do you know about trees and animals? Do they interest you?" I had to confess they did not; upon which he began again on books and matters of literature; and upon Thoreau. Of Thoreau he did not seem to care to say very much. But he showed me the lake, and where Thoreau lived, and what he related of him, though his appreciation was critical, was touched with the kindness habitual to him. I had read the Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers—or perhaps read it later—and Walden, which is thinner, and I had heard, then or since, that some of Thoreau's admirers accused Emerson of borrowing from him. But there was not much to borrow; nor, for Emerson, anything. The friendship between the two men was close and lasted long, but if there were any question of borrowing or lending in the books of either, the debt was not on Emerson's side.
Now and then as we walked in the forest, or through the streets, we met a farmer or other resident of Concord, and it was pleasant to see their greetings to their great townsman. On the heights he trod no other set foot, but in the daily business and intercourse of life he was each man's friend, and each was his. One of them told me—it was Rockwood Hoar, afterward Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and United States Attorney-General—that half the affairs of Concord were on Emerson's shoulders. He was the chosen adviser, peacemaker, arbitrator between these hard-headed, practical people of Concord; the man to whom they went with their troubles; the man whose decision in difficult disputes was accepted without demur. "I don't suppose," said Mr. Hoar, "that Emerson ever opened a law book or the Revised Statutes. But he had a native shrewdness, an eye for the points of a case, a sense of equity, and a willingness to take pains which made him an ideal referee." I once told an eminent Whig who had been abusing Emerson as a mere visionary, that his neighbours, who knew him best, trusted him in this way. "They are welcome to him," growled the eminent Whig.
He also was welcome to them. He was the possession and pride of Concord; beloved by the people among whom he lived his life. I suppose his lines about the embattled farmers who fired the shot heard round the world, are better known and have thrilled more hearts than any others he ever wrote. They seemed to be always on Concord lips. Yes, but Emerson himself had fired another shot heard round the world; or round so much of it as speaks the English, or Anglo-American, tongue. So when misfortune befell him and his house was half burnt, and his health failed, they besought him to go abroad for rest; and while he was gone they rebuilt his house for him in the exact similitude of the old. He was gone a year, all but two months, with his daughter Ellen, the true child of her father and his most faithful and helpful friend. When Emerson returned, Concord turned out to greet him, built a triumphal arch beneath which he had, perhaps reluctantly, to pass; and so reinstalled him in his old-new home.
This, of course, was long after the time of which I am writing; in 1872-3. But when he came to England, he knew that his friends in Concord were rebuilding his house. He could not speak of it without emotion. His state of health was such that emotion was hurtful to him, and his daughter used to ask us not to refer to the house. But whether we did or not, Emerson brooded over it, and was better and happier in the thought of his friends' friendship for him.