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THE EDUCATION OF ok: HENRY ADAMS
THE MODERN LIBRARY OF THE WORLD’S BEST BOOKS
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THE EDUCATION OF ~ HENRY ADAMS
BY HENRY ADAMS
INTRODUCTION BY
JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS
eh
THE { , “MODERN LIBRARY NEW YORK TN |
©
COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY THE MODERN LIBRARY, INC.
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INTRODUCTION
Few books have had so unexpected a success as The Education of Henry Adams. Printing the manuscript privately in 1907 in an edition of one hundred copies only for distribution among his friends, the author declined to allow the book to be published during his lifetime. He bequeathed the copyright, however, to the Massachusetts Historical Society, and in 1918, about six months after his death, the first published edition appeared. Al- though The Education had aroused a deep interest among all those who had been able to have access to one of the original copies, few if any would have predicted for it a great popular success. Yet it has already sold more copies than many “best sellers,” and has won an assured place not only among the signi- ficant works in American literature but among those which com. mand a wide and steadily enlarging public. Especially among the younger generatiori, the influence of the book is markedly in. creasing. To understand why this should be so, we shall have to consider briefly the mood or mind of the public as well as the author.
Henry [Brooks] Adams was born in Boston, February 16, 1838, _ and died in Washington, March 27, 1918. Within that span of eighty years, although usually thought of as a rather sedentary man of letters, he had been one of the most far-ranging and constant of American travellers, his wanderings taking him over practically all of his own country, Mexico, the West Indies, Eu- rope, Egypt, the Near East, Japan, and the islands of the Pacific. His life, however, was one of a spiritual and not of physical ad- venture.
The most profound influence in his life and character was that of his heritage. His great-grandfather was John Adams, revolu- tionary hero, Commissioner to negotiate peace with England in 1783, first Minister to England, and second President of the- United States. His grandfather was John Quincy Adams, Com-
Viol INTRODUCTION
missioner to negotiate peace ‘with England after the War of 1812, Minister to England following the cessation of hostilities, and subsequently President of the United States. His father was Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England during the Civil War, and one of the ablest diplomats America has produced. By the time the line reached Henry, the accumulated weight of great abilities and great offices had become crushing in a democracy. in no other American family, and in few anywhere, have ability and service been so conspicuous generation after generation with- out a break. In an aristocracy such a family would have been - given a title, and have become a continuing entity as a family in the political and social life of the country. Ina democracy there could be no such scaffolding built, so to say, about the structure. The members of each generation would have to stand or fall by their own abilities and, quite as much, by the partic- ular relation that those abilities and qualities might bear at any given moment to the national life, temper, ideals and aims about them.
For three generations the family had had power to direct the destinies of nations. Their careers had all been great, and they had all been played out as the center of things in times of great crises. No Adams was ever a politician. They cared little enough for mere office in itself. They had little respect for the mind or opinions of the common man merely because he was a man. They always got their own light from their own guiding stars and not from the will o’ the wisps of the-marsh of “public opin- ion.” But they did care intensely for power, power to serve their country and to direct events toward what they considered the right goal. ;
Having played such parts for a century it would become a fair — inference to a new generation that inability to carry on the tradition would spell failure, failure in one’s self or failure some- how in adjustment to the conditions of the environment. A certain failure of that sort had become noticeable by the time of Henry’s father, in some ways the ablest of all, although that title belongs indubitably to John Quincy. MHenry’s father had not become President, though in the war he rendered greater service to the nation than anyone, perhaps, except the President. The failure in adjustment to environment had begun. In Henry it
INTRODUCTION | vii
became complete, in so far as in his own day there could be no place for a man of his peculiar abilities and. qualities in public life. Having always had their hands on the lever of power, suc- cess, however distinguished in science, the arts or other careers, could scarcely fail to spell comparative failure, and in consider- ing the rather over-done irony and constant acceptance of him- self as a failure in the Education, the fact of Henry’s burden of inheritance must be given its due weight. By any ordinary standard for individuals, Henry’s career was a brilliant one. The’ sense of frustration and failure came because he was not wield- ing that power the desire for which was in his blood and which each of his ancestors had managed to control. \ We cannot deal with that career in any detail here. Briefly, after graduation from Harvard, and two years’ travel in Europe, he accompanied his father as secretary when the appointment as. Minister to England suddenly took the latter to London a few weeks after Fort Sumter had been fired on. There for about eight years Henry watched the game of diplomacy played. Re- turning to America after the war was over, he reached for power through the press, acting as a special correspondent in Washing- ton, with his eye on an eventual editorial chair from which he might influence opinion. President.:Grant’s régime and the open- ing of the 70’s dashed his hopes of public service, and he ac- cepted a chair in history at Harvard and the editorship of the North American Review. Although his work at Harvard, both in the influence of his personality and in his introduction of new methods of teaching, was brilliant, seven years were enough, and he and his wife moved to Washington. Until her tragic death in 1885 he devoted himself to literature, among the works of that period being his yet standard Life of Gallatin, and his two novels,—Democracy, a brilliant picture of Washington social and political life, and Esther. After the death of his wife he made the first of his Far Eastern trips with La Farge, and on his return devoted several years to completing his History of the Adminis- - trations of Jefferson and Madison, the nine volumes of which at once placed him in the very first rank of American historians. That completed, he again wandered to the Pacific with La Farge, sailing from one group of islands to another, a trip which clearly marked the change from one phase of his life and thought, and
Vili INTRODUCTION |
the opening of another. From then on he moved back and forth between America and Europe, becoming more and more ab- sorbed in his efforts to read the riddles of history and human existence.
Could he find any common denominator for the various sorts of forces playing in the universe——the dynamo and the Virgin? Could history, that is human existence, be given anything ap- proaching the laws of the physical universe? I have dealt, efse- where at length with his theory of history and need not trouble
-the general reader with it here. Suffice it to say that in his attempt to establish mathematical laws of speed and direction | he wished to establish, first, certain reference points from which the curves could be plotted. For the first, he chose roughly the twelfth century, in which he thought that man had attained to
_ his highest sense of unity; and for the second, the twentieth, in which that unity had completely given place to multiplicity. For a full description of the first point, he wrote his Mont-Saint- . Michel and Chartres, and for the second his Education of Henry Adams. No one now reads either of these books with any refer- ence to Adams’s theory of history. In fact, as he wrote them his own theoretical purpose gave way, and the first became under his hand one of the finest of introductions to an understanding of the Middle Ages, and the second one of the most absorbing and significant of autobiographies. It is as such that they have both become abiding possessions of American literature. |
The first, Adams finally consented to have published, it origi- nally having been privately printed as was the Education. The
Jatter was never fully revised, and, it must be confessed, in its later portions it shows somewhat too clearly the impossible pur- pose which Adams had in mind in writing it. He himself was never satisfied with its form, and for that reason he had de- clined publication. He had revised Mont-Saint Michel in 1911 but suffered from a paralytic stroke the following year, after which further literary work was out of the question. Those who wish to study his historical theory will find a clearer exposition in the essays in The Degradution of the Democratic Dogma, and those who do not, may skim lightly over certain chapters of the Education.
Even in its somewhat amorphous form, however, that book
INTRODUCTION — ix
has become, as I have said, not only an American Classic but a popular one, and we may try to answer to some extent the ques- tion why?
As I have tried to show, the attaining of power is a question not only of ability but of adjustment to environment. John Adams was well attuned to his. His theory of government by the people was an eighteenth century theory, and his power was - lost in the frst year of the nineteenth. John Quincy was a better democrat than the revolutionary John, but he began to lose faith as he watched the democracy of the Jacksonian era in operation. One after another he saw the ideals of what a great democracy might strive for abandoned in the lust for gain, for personal comfort and riches. By the time of Charles Francis the American democracy had swung far from the orbit in which, and in which only, the individualists of the Adams family could continue to revolve. Henry could only watch the body politic swinging at incredible speed away from the family into the waste spaces beyond. “We, the people” had become marvelously “we, the plunderers.” To be sure, most of the people were rather the plundered, but hope was in the air; any day the réle might be reversed in the individual case, and meanwhile it would be best to let the game go on in case Fate should throw trumps
‘to us some day. The really great and noble American dream,
the dream of a better and fuller life for every man, had become a good deal like the stampede of hogs to a trough. Such a stampede, like the subway rush, is no place for the development
_ of the finer elements of life and thought. The mere ability to
get there becomes of high value, and the display of gentlemanly qualities would preclude one from ever boarding the train.
There ‘are not a few signs to-day that in this America of ours, there is wide revolt against the direction that our life has taken. We are no longer sure that we are to achieve social and eco- nomic democracy by giving everyone except minors and idiots the vote; that wealth will create a satisfying scale of values for us; that by losing our individuality so that every want can be satisfied under a national brand we shall somehow attain to a higher standard of living. In a word there is a good bit of questioning of democracy as it has developed; an interest in people who have insisted on being themselves and suiting them-
x YNTRODUCTION
selves, even at the risk of being called snobs; a questioning of | all concepts, including those of failure and success. Against the whole rushing stream of contemporary life, the individual feels himself rather powerless, and prone to irony as the way of escape. The flood of biographies shows the public’s interest in personality, and this flood may be expected to keep up so long as the readers feel their own personalities more and more sub- merged: In the old days the servant girl-used to read about the duchess. In just the same spirit to-day the person who feels himself lost in standardization reads about anyone who in- sisted upon being a person, even if only to be a racketeer. The autobiography of Henry Adams fits’ all the above and other moods of the present day. Just as an Adams was in power or not, regardless of his abilities, according as he fitted his environ- ment, so a book has to fulfill this relation of adjustment. For some years yet, The Education of Henry Adams should find a receptive public. It is not the least of its irony that its author should succeed where ‘he thought he had failed, and exert a posthumous power through a source which he had sought to conceal.
It is too soon to argue about the permanent place in any lit~- erature of an author who has been only a dozen years in his grave. We may, however, forecast a lasting one for a man who ° has to his credit at least one brilliant novel, a biography that is- still “definitive” after a half century, a full-length history of one of the most important periods in American history that will not be superseded for many a year, the best synthesis of the varied spiritual life of the Middle Ages, and the most important auto- biography that has yet been written in America. As for “failure” we may add that books last longer than statesmen. Werwill find among our figures of the past no stronger individualists, when we need them, than in the Adams line. We come to grips with the heart of John Quincy in his Diary. We find another phase in his grandson’s Education. :
JAMEs TrUusLow ADAMS Lonpon, January, 1931.
x
a Py aed
CONTENTS
: Epitor’s Prerace. By Henry Cabot Lodge cae :
~ PREFACE LPP
‘ I. Quincy (1838-1848) : :
a
| BECBOSTON (VSS8 1854) lk ee ee a TI, Wasuineton (1850-1854) i
* TV. Harvard CoLiece (1854-1858)
. BERLIN (1858-1859)
. Rome (1859-1860)
Se PREASON CESOO-TSO1) os ete he
. Dirptomacy (1861) .
. FOES OR FRIENDS (1862)
. Poriticat Moratity (1862)
. THE BATTLE oF THE Rams (1863)
ie XI.
i x10.
XIV. XV,
i XVI.
XVII.
XVII. XIX.
: . FarLturE (1871) eres
EccenTRIcITy (1863)
THE PERFECTION oF HuMAN Society (1864) DILETTANTISM (1865-1866) 3 Darwinism (1867-1868) THE Press (1868) . PRESIDENT GRANT (1869) . FREE Ficut (1869-1870) . Cuaos (1870)
e116 1-128 . 145 . 167 . 180 . 194 “9208 ona24 aoe 255 . 268 . 284 . 299
vii
as
23 40
Sy Ot vn
82 98
vi
». OO XXII. AXITI. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXII. XXXIV. XXXV.
CONTENTS
Twenty YEARS AFTER (1892) . Cuicaco (1893)
SILENCE (1894-1898)
INDIAN SUMMER (1898-1899)
Tur DvyNAMOo AND THE VIRGIN (1900) . Twiticut (1901)
TEUFELSDROCKH (1901) .
THe HEIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE (1902) . THE AByss OF IGNQRANCE (1902) . Vis INERTIAE (1903) .
THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE (1903) . Vis Nova (1903-1904)
A Dynamic THEorY oF History (1904) A Law oF ACCELERATION (1904)
Nunc AcE (1905)
TENE pa oe ease re eich tole ice ion cece
. 314 o33i . 346 2362 . 379 . 391 . 403 . 416 . 426 . 436 . 449°
. 462 . ATA . 489 . 499 | . 507
| |
EDITOR’S PREFACE
Tuts volume, written in 1905 as a sequel to the same author’s “ number of one hundred copies, in 1906, and sent to the persons in- terested, for their assent, correction, or suggestion. Theideaofthe two books was thus explained at the end of Chapter XXIX:—
“Any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be meas- ured by motion from a fixed point. ‘Psychology helped here by suggesting a unit —the point of history when man held the high- est idea of himself as a unit in a unified universe. Eight or ten years of study had led Adams to think he might use the century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he might measure mo- tion down to his own time, without assuming anything as true or untrue, except relation. The movement might be studied at once in philosophy and mechanics. Setting himself to the task, he be- gan a volume which he mentally knew as *Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity.” From that point he proposed to fix a position for himself, which he couid label: ‘The Education of Henry Adams: A Study of Twentieth- Century Multiplicity. With the help of these two points of
' yelation, he hoped to project his lines forward and backward
indefinitely, subject to correction from any one who should know better.”
The “Chartres” was finished and privately printed in 1904. The “Education” proved to be more difficult. The point on which the author failed to please himself, and could get no light
|; from readers or friends, was the usual one of literary form. Probably he saw it in advance, for he used to say, half in jest,
that his great ambition was to complete St. Augustine’s “Con- fessions,” but that St. Augustine, like a great artist, had worked from multiplicity to unity, while he, like a small one, had to
{ viii aii EpItTor’s PREFACE
reverse the method and work back from unity to multiplicity. The scheme became unmanageable as he approached his end. Probably he was, in fact, trying only to work into it his favor- ite theory of history, which now fills the last three or four chap- ters of the “Education,” and he could not satisfy himself with his workmanship. At all events, he was still pondering over the problem in 1910, when he tried to deal with it in another way which might be more intelligible to students. He printed a small volume called “A Letter to American Teachers,” which he sent to his associates in the American Historical Association, hoping to provoke some response. Before he could satisfy himself even on this minor point, a severe illness in the spring of 1912 put an end to his literary activity forever.
The matter soon passed beyond his control. In 1913 the Insti- tute of Architects published the “Mont-Saint-Michel and Char- tres.” Already the “Education” had become almost as well known as the “Chartres,” and was freely quoted by every book whose author requested it. The author could no longer withdraw either volume; he could no longer rewrite either, and he could not publish that which he thought unprepared and unfinished, although in his opinion the other was historically purposeless without its sequel. In the end, he preferred to leave the “Edu- cation” unpublished, avowedly incomplete, trusting that it might quietly fade from memory. According to his theory of history as explained in Chapters XX XIII and XXXIV, the teacher was at best helpless, and, in the immediate future, silence next to good- temper was the mark of sense. After midsummer, 1914, the rule was made absolute.
' The Massachusetts Historical Society now publishes the “Ed- ucation” as it was printed in 1907, with only such marginal cor- rections as the author made, and it does' this, not in opposition to the author’s judgment, but only to put both volumes equally within reach of students wha have occasion to consult them.
September, 1918 HIENEY A508 ee
PREFACE _. Jean Jacques Rousseau began his famous “Confessions” by a ‘vehement appeal to the Deity: “I have shown myself as I was; contemptible and vile when I was so; good, generous, sublime _ when! was so; I have unveiled my interior such as Thou thyself hast seen it, Eternal Father! Collect about me the innumerable swarm of my fellows; let them hear my confessions ; let them groan at my unworthiness; let them blush at my meannesses | Let each of them discover his heart in his turn at the foot of thy throne with the same sincerity ; and then let any one of them tell thee if he dares: ‘I was a better man!’”
Jean Jacques was a very great educator in the manner of the eighteenth century, and has been commonly thought to have hed more influence than any other teacher of his time ; but his pecul- iar method of improving human nature has not been universally admired. Most educators of the nineteenth century have declined
to show themselves before their scholars as objects more vile or contemptible than necessary, and even the humblest teacher hides, if possible, the faults with which nature has generously embellished us all, as it did Jean Jacques, thinking, as most relt- | gious minds are apt to do, that the Eternal Father himself may not feel unmixed pleasure at our thrusting under his eyes chiefly _. the least agreeable details of his creation. ; . Asanunfortunate result the twentieth century finds few recent - guides to avoid, or to follow. American literature offers scarcely one working model for high education. The student must go back, beyond Jean Jacques, to Benjamin Franklin, to find a model even of self-teaching. ‘Except in the abandoned sphere of _ the dead languages, no one has discussed what part of education has, in his personal experience, turned out to be useful, and what | not. This volume attempts to discuss it.
14
x PREFACE Ske
As educator, Jean Jacques was, in one respect, easily first; he erected a monument of warning against the Ego. Since his time, and largely thanks to him, the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of model, to become a manikin on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object of study is the garment, not the figure. The tailor adapts the manikin as well as the clothes to his patron’s wants. The tailor’s object, in this volume, is to fit voung men, in universities or elsewhere, to be men of the world, equipped for any emergency; and the garment offered to them is meant to show the faults of the patchwork fitted on their fathers.
At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject of education, is a certain form of energy; the obj ject to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.
The manikin, therefore, has the same value as any other geo- metrical figure of three or more dimensions, which is used for the study of relation. For that purpose it cannot be spared; it 's the only measure of motion, of proportion, of human condi- ion; it must have the air of reality; must be taken for real; nuust be treated as though it had life. Who knows? Possibly it had!
February 16, 1907
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‘THE EDUCATI
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THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS