University of Virginia Library

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EDITOR'S PREFACE

This volume, written in 1905 as a sequel to the same author's "Mont-Saint-Michel
and Chartres" was privately printed, to the number of
one hundred copies, in 1906, and sent to the persons interested, for
their assent, correction, or suggestion. The idea of the two books was
thus explained at the end of Chapter XXIX: —

"Any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured
by motion from a fixed point. Psychology helped here by suggesting
a unit—the point of history when man held the highest 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 motion 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 began 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
could label: 'The Education of Henry Adams: a Study of Twentieth-Century
Multiplicity.' With the help of these two points of relation,
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 "Confessions," but that St. Augustine,
like a great artist, had worked from multiplicity to unity, while he,
like a small one, had to reverse the method and work back from unity

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viii

Probably he was, in fact, trying only to work into it his favorite
theory of history, which now fills the last three or four chapters 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 Institute
of Architects published the "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres."
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 "Education" unpublished, avowedly incomplete,
trusting that it might quietly fade from memory. According to his
theory of history as explained in Chapters XXXIIV and XXXIF, 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 "Education"
as it was printed in 1907, with only suck marginal corrections
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
who have occasion to consult them.