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<h1>THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS</h1>


<div class="numsoff">
===EDITOR'S PREFACE===
<div class="cent">
<h2 >Proposal for <i>Man and Judgment</i></h2>


<h3>On the Nature and Value of an<br>Educative Encyclopedia</h3>
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;THIS volume, written in 1905 as a sequel to the same author's <i>Mont Saint Michel and Chartres,</i> 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:--


<h3>by Robbie McClintock</h3>
<blockquote>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 <i>Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity.</i> From that point he proposed to fix a position for himself, which he could label: <i>The Education of Henry Adams: a Study of Twentieth-Century Multiplicity.</i> 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.</blockquote>


<blockquote>Proposal drafted in the Spring of 1975 submitted informally to the National
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The <i>Chartres</i> was finished and privately printed in 1904. The <i>Education</i> 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 <i>Confessions,</i> 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 to multiplicity. The scheme became unmanageable as he approached his end.</p>
Academy of Education.</blockquote></div>


<p>During the past few months I have been becoming familiar with the new edition
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;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 <i>Education</i>, 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 <i>A Letter to American Teachers</i>, 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.</p>
of the Encyclopedia Britannica and reflecting on its value as an educative
instrument. These reflections are drawing me deeper and deeper into a
confrontation with present-day pedagogical possibilities. This has been most
fruitful for me, and whereas you wanted me to write an essay, I have begun to
want to write a book. What follows—I apologize for its unseemly length—should
perhaps be thought of less as a letter and more as a progress report and project
proposal, in which I outline the book I want to write and explain its potential
significance. [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p><i>Britannica 15</i> is a big set of tomes and there are many particular
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The matter soon passed beyond his control. In 1913 the Institute of Architects published the <i>Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres</i>. Already the <i>Education</i> had become almost as well known as the <i>Chartres</i>, 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 <i>Education</i> unpublished, avowedly incomplete, trusting that it might quietly fade from memory. According to his theory of history as explained in Chapters XXXIII 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.</p>
points to consider in reflecting on its value as an educative instrument I'm
well along in considering a variety of these particulars. But the question I
have found most fascinating and productive is simply—How good is the theory of
general education embodied in <i>Britannica 15</i>? To answer this question
fairly, I have found it necessary to think through the more fundamental
question—What should the character and purpose of a good general education in
the present-day world be, and how might such an education be imparted through an
encyclopedia? The book I want to write will attempt an answer to this question,
and in the course of doing so will provide a fundamental critique of the new
Britannica. What I have in mind is a three-part essay, which I am tentatively
calling <i>Man and Judgment: Reflections on the Nature and Value of an Educative
Encyclopedia</i>. My hope is to write a book that will be responsively read, to
imbue it with point and authority, to provoke with it a more fruitful
pedagogical debate. In what follows, I sketch my ideas for this essay, with the
hope that you will find them to be a suitable expansion of my undertaking for
the Academy. [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>I call the first part "The Function of Judgment: Reflections on the Idea of
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The Massachusetts Historical Society now publishes the<i>Education</i> as it was printed in 1907, with only such 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.</p>
an Encyclopedic Education," and in it I want to place the educative effort of
<i>Britannica 15</i> in the educational tradition that goes back to the early
Greeks. An encyclopedic education, <i>enkyklios paideia</i>, has been considered
the education suitable for free men, for men who will act, for better or for
worse, in public and in private, in accordance with their considered personal
judgment. In an opening chapter, I want to survey this tradition at its best,
giving a lively yet authoritative summation of the educational ideal that has
given rise to the tradition. As Homer put it in the <i>Iliad</i>, the aim of
Achilles' education, which was in the context of the time an encyclopedic
education, was to learn to act effectively and to speak wisely, and in the
endless transformations that the encyclopedic education has gone through since
then, the raison d'être for it has remained the imperative that the autonomous
person needs to prepare himself as well as possible to judge intelligently his
words and deeds in all matters affecting his well being. Insofar as the person
lacks such power of judgment, he is not autonomous, for insofar as he cannot
judge for himself, he is dependent on the judgment of others. The tradition of
encyclopedic education has always worked through a many-sided body of learning
because the demands on judgment that life puts to the autonomous person are
many-sided. As the problems of life change, the circle of studies has
continually changed, but it has always remained broad, and be it according to
Plato or Aristotle, Cicero or Seneca, Augustine or Aquinas, Montaigne or
Erasmus, Bacon or Comenius, Diderot or Rousseau, Kant or Hegel, Newman or
Arnold, Spencer or Dewey, the ultimate aim of acquiring a range of knowledge is
the formation of the power of judgment by which one must live: knowledge is the
means, the conduct of life the end. [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>Only in the degenerated form of an encyclopedic education has the acquisition
<p class="right">HENRY CABOT LODGE, &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;<i>September, 1918</i></p>
of comprehensive knowledge for its own sake become the end, and historically the
waxing of such a purpose has been one of the surest signs of cultural sterility.
In a second chapter, I want to examine the tendency of <i>enkyklios paideia</i>
to degenerate into a quest for knowledge for its own sake, and to pay, in this
context, particular attention to <i>Britannica 15</i>, for in it the editors
have not dealt effectively with the problem of judgment. At best, they have
simply made the current body of knowledge accessible to the curious reader,
although I have, on testing the undertaking, some grave doubts about how
accessible the body of knowledge will <i>actually</i> prove to be when the
curious reader sits down to appropriate it according to the program put before
him. But that is another issue. In defense of their purpose, and not their
execution of it, the Britannica editors might well point out that there are
serious questions, long-ago raised by the profoundest theorists of encyclopedic
education, whether judgment can be taught. It can well be argued that no
educative agency, be it an encyclopedia or a university, should venture to
address the problem of judgment directly, that in doing so the educator would,
on a grand scale, be converting knowledge into dogma.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>In a third chapter, I want to take this problem up with the hope of
<hr>
developing the basis for an alternative to the program of general education
embodied in <i>Britannica 15</i>. My argument will develop along the following
lines. Within the tradition of encyclopedic education, the question whether
judgment can be taught has been much discussed, with the usual conclusion that
substantively judgment is always situational, and therefore the most that can be
taught is an effective preparation for making one's continuous series of
concrete judgments, which are one's course of life. Many have argued that
therefore a comprehensive presentation of the body of knowledge in the manner of
<i>Britannica 15</i> is the best possible preparation for making such judgments.
My intention is to argue, in part through historical interpretation and in part
through theoretical reflection, that although judgment cannot be taught, it can
be informed. The principle, I shall contend, by which judgment is informed is
that of speaking to the questions. By speaking to the questions, I mean
something fundamentally different from giving pat, dogmatic answers to them.
When one speaks to the questions of another, one leaves the question open—it is
his question about which he must decide. Instead of answering, it, one speaks to
it and in doing so one expands and deepens it by explaining what values one
finds at stake in the question, by indicating what areas of comprehension one
thinks pertinent to making up one's mind about the question, by suggesting what
skills may be useful in translating into action possible answers to the
questions. Such discourse fully respects the questioner's autonomy one listens
freely and attentively to someone so gifted with the ability to speak to one's
questions, for it creates dialogue, not dogma. My contention will be that the
art of devising an effectively educative encyclopedia at any historic juncture
consists in anticipating accurately the questions that the man who would judge
wisely can and should be asking and in finding the authorities who can best
speak to those questions in an open manner.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>With this contention, I come to the second part of <i>Man and Judgment</i>,
<h3>PREFACE</h3>
which I anticipate calling "The Formation of Judgment: Reflections on the
Possibility of an Educative Encyclopedia." In this section, I want to go beyond
the simple observation that <i>Britannica 15</i> fails to speak to the
questions. Perhaps it does: one can only judge by specifying what the questions
are that should be spoken to. In this section, I want to go as far as I can in
an attempt to work out what these are, and even more importantly, to develop a
method for putting the questions and justifying them as the ones of true
importance. Ultimately, in practice, if a really good educative encyclopedia is
to be developed, many well-informed people with diverse expert competencies
should come together to work out a common understanding of the questions to
which an educative encyclopedia should try to speak. What I want to do is to
provoke such a larger effort, by venturing a single-handed start and by trying
to develop a rationale of questioning that would prove helpful in the larger
effort.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>Consequently, I would start the section with a chapter on the general
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU began his famous <i>Confessions</i> 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 I 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!'"</p>
principles by which one can determine what questions should be spoken to. The
first principle is that one begins not with the body of knowledge -what
questions in it are currently most important—but with the reader who is the
reader whose questions are to be spoken to in an educative encyclopedia. Let us
accept the conception used in <i>Britannica 15</i>, the reader is the
intelligent general reader who can be expected to follow a clear, non-technical
presentation of any subject. Such a reader could conceivably ask an infinite
array of questions. To find which should be spoken to, one should look first to
the problem of judgment. Each particular reader, no matter how nearly he
approximates a perfect incarnation of the "general reader," will have a wealth
of particular judgments to make—not all of these can be spoken to in an
encyclopedia designed to provoke general education in the general reader. But
many of the judgments he will have to make concern general problems of judgment,
pertaining either to such basic experience that each person encounters them or
to such comprehensive experience that nearly all people are affected by them.
And thus the basic criterion can be stated so: the questions that should be
spoken to in an educative encyclopedia are those that undergird the formation of
intelligent judgment with respect to all matters of human action that have
effects which are significant for the quality of life people lead, and that are
general, either in the sense that they are so characteristically human that
close to each person singly experiences them, or that they are of such
comprehensiveness that nearly all people are touched together by their effects.
[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>With this principle, I would then try to work out as best I can the circle of
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Jean Jacques was a very great educator in the manner of the eighteenth century, and has been commonly thought to have had more influence than any other teacher of his time; but his peculiar 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 religious 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.
questions that the ideal reader of an ideally educative encyclopedia would or
should be asking. I expect the <i>Britannica 15</i> to be immensely helpful in
this, in particular because it excels in the comprehensiveness by which it deals
with the phenomena comprehensible to contemporary thought. My plan is to write a
series of chapters, each devoted respectively to one of the ten parts in the
system of knowledge in <i>Britannica 15</i>: "Matter and energy," "The earth,"
"Life on earth," "Human life," "Human society," "Art," "Technology," "Religion,"
"The history of mankind," and "The branches of knowledge." In each chapter I
would reflect on what human actions pertinent to the domain of knowledge are
having effects on the quality of life that are significant and that are general
by virtue of their affecting either each or all. My assumption is that the free
man, the autonomous person, the ideal reader, will want to make himself capable
of forming a considered, personal judgment about the course that should be taken
in these matters of generally significant action and that he will want to
prepare himself to give some effect to his judgment in these areas by means of
personal deed or public utterance. To develop such an active judgment, a
spectrum of questions to which authorities could speak would occur to the ideal
reader.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>Imagine that the ideal reader has before him, not the assembled articles in
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;As an unfortunate 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.</p>
the Britannica's division on "Atoms," but rather the assembled authorities who
contributed the articles in this section. I find it highly improbable that the
questioning of these authorities by the ideal reader would unfold according to
the outline of knowledge offered by the editors of <i>Britannica 15</i>,: "Who
is the expert on the atomic nucleus? Ah, would you tell me all about it please?"
I find the ideal reader in this situation putting something much more difficult
to the assembled experts, something like this:  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<blockquote>I am aware that what is done in atomic physics is at once promising
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;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 young 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.</p>
and portentous: It has opened vast sources of energy, both constructive and
destructive. I am aware that it is one of the most subtle d costly fields of
scientific research, dependent for its existence, and, notwithstanding the
imponderables of scientific advance, perhaps for its direction, on public
support through governments, foundations, and businesses. I realize that through
its applications it has markedly influenced my life and the lives of my fellows,
and I believe that as a member of the public that supports it and as ;a person
materially affected by it, I am responsible for seeing that the proper support
is provided, for understanding as best I can the research alternatives, their
potential consequences, good and bad, and the means, if any, of intelligently
controlling those consequences. Being an autonomous person, aspiring to make
responsible judgments about the matters that affect me, ,I am going to try to
make up my mind about how nuclear physics should be supported, directed, and
applied in the contemporary world. I don't want you to tell me what to conclude
in this matter, but I would like you to speak as fully as you can to several
questions that I feel are important if I am to inform my judgment on it
effectively. First, what various values are at stake in considering the support,
direction, and application of nuclear physics? Second, what should I comprehend
about the subject and its applications in order to understand the actual
alternatives? And third, what skills are accessible to me, an intelligent,
concerned layman, that may help me give effect to the views I shall form?
[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</blockquote>


<p>Such questions, such real questions pertaining to actual problems of
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;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 object 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.</p>
judgment, will, when spoken to, generate a powerfully educative encyclopedia.
What I want to do in these chapters is to work my way through the system of
knowledge in <i>Britannica 15</i>, generating fifty to a hundred such sets of
questions; and in doing so, I want not only to state the questions, but to draw
together as best I can an indication of what material there is at hand that does
in fact speak to them. Were one to have to do this in a vacuum, it would be
totally unfeasible, but it need not be done in one, for there are significant
helps at hand. <i>Britannica 15</i>, itself, undoubtedly will be a great aid in
finding material that speaks to the questions I put—the real critique of its
value as an educative instrument will unfold in the effort to find material that
speaks to such questions. And as I have looked into recent "educative
encyclopedias," I have found in addition to <i>Britannica 15</i>, two major
efforts that are accessible to me linguistically—<i>l'Encyclopédie de la
Pléiade</i> and <i>Rowohlts Deutsche Encyklopädie</i>. [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>Together, these three encyclopedias offer very different responses to what
<p>[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The manikin, therefore, has the same value as any other geometrical figure of three or more dimensions, which is used for the study of relation. For that purpose it cannot be spared; it is the only measure of motion, of proportion, of human condition; it must have the air of reality; must be taken for real; must be treated as though it had life. Who knows? Possibly it had!</p>
appears to be a widely felt, contemporary desire to revive the educative
function of the encyclopedia, and in an effort to identify the available
material that speaks to the questions the ideal reader should be putting, they
promise to complement each other well. Whereas the <i>Britannica 15</i> is an
attempt to adapt the alphabetical reference encyclopedia to educative purposes,
which excels in the comprehensiveness of its coverage of knowledge, the
<i>Pléiade</i> reverts to a thematic organization, substantially sacrificing the
customary reference function in order to increase thematic integrity; it excels,
so far as my experience with it goes, in making accessible to the general reader
a comprehension of the intellectual processes that have given rise to the
current system of knowledge. And whereas the <i>Pléiade</i>, like <i>Britannica
15</i>, deals largely with knowledge, rather than judgment, the <i>Rowohlt</i>
makes use of paperback publishing technology to create an encyclopedic selection
of books, in which the idea of reference is largely abandoned in an effort to
speak provocatively to some of the questions a general reader will be asking in
trying to interpret the contemporary world; it excels as a preliminary effort to
inform the judgment of the general reader in a wide range of matters. Working
with these previous efforts, I think I can show that a stimulating system of
questions, which the general reader should want to have spoken to, can be
generated, and that at least to some degree there exists a significant body of
material that does indeed speak to these questions. In doing this my purpose
will not be to weigh the respective virtues and vices of <i>Britannica 15</i>,
the <i>Pléiade</i>, and the <i>Rowohlt</i>, although in the course of the
argument, such comparative evaluation will in effect be made. Instead, my prime
purpose will be to work out and test the principles that I think should underlie
the editing of a truly educative, contemporary encyclopedia, one that if brought
into being would be quite different from any of these three.  
[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>This last conditional clause, "that if brought into being...," brings me to
<p class="right"><i>February 16, 1907</i></p>
the third section of the undertaking, "The Future of Judgment: Reflections on
the Public Significance of an Educative Encyclopedia." In this section, through
two chapters, I want to argue that it is of great pedagogical and political
importance that such an encyclopedia be developed. In these chapters, I want to
come out strongly against the political and pedagogical fatalism that has
gripped us. Skeptics will argue that the encyclopedic education and the
educative encyclopedia, for which I yearn, have ceased to be possible. They will
intone the cliché that in the past few centuries knowledge has grown so much
that no person can grasp all within it that is pertinent to his problems of
judgment. Further, they will argue that the scale of action has reached such a
plane of complexity that no person can hope to make a considered personal
judgment about the matters that affect him. In addition, they will observe that
it is most dangerous to suggest to the individual that he can and, should judge
of the most important matters for himself. In short, they will hold that the
general reader I have postulated has become neither possible nor desirable, and
that misguided efforts to bring him into being will only create more trouble in
a world that has trouble enough.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>


<p>Pedagogically, the problem is whether the encyclopedic ideal can be revived
<hr></text>
and whether anything significant will be achieved in doing so. It is true that
we have allowed the encyclopedia to fall into decay and an encyclopedic
education, in its best sense, is no longer available. But that something does
not exist is not adequate proof that it cannot exist. Whether an encyclopedic
education can be revived is problematic, and we will have a much better sense of
the possibilities and difficulties after the effort outlined in the previous
section has been made: the only way to test the proposition that an encyclopedic
education is impossible is to try to revive it and to fail repeatedly. But the
other part of the question—what would be the significance of success in this
attempt? —is here more important. In two chapters, I shall seek to demonstrate,
through historical interpretation and theoretical reflection, propositions that
I can here state only as a credo: the principle pedagogical problem is that an
effective encyclopedic education is unavailable, and the principle political
problem is that citizens, whose judgment has been formed through an encyclopedic
education, are lacking in the public.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>
 
<p>The unavailability of an
encyclopedic education is the principal pedagogical problem in the most serious
sense, in the sense that it is the <i>principium</i>, the source, from which all
the other problems stem. Our whole system of education is decaying, rotting
away, first here, then there, because pedagogical skepticism has become the
dominant mood of nearly everyone concerned. Teachers have lost faith in their
instructional authority, students feel no personal commitment to a process the
humane worth of which they do not experience, the diverse publics have become
willing to support educational institutions only for other reasons—community
pride, class snobbery, commercial interest, national defense, and so on. What is
the source of this pedagogical skepticism? It is not disillusionment over a poor
performance on the elementary level: Measured against ideal expectations, the
performance has always been poor, and comparatively the performance on the
elementary level, and all the other levels as well, has been significantly
higher in recent decades than ever before. In recent decades, something more
complicated and subtle his eroded general confidence in the system, namely the
spreading realization that at the top the educative encyclopedia is missing. Its
lack is the source of our pedagogical skepticism: without it we experience all
the rest as something that ultimately lacks a <i>telos</i>. When present among men, the
educative encyclopedia is invariably a matter for the few—although open to all
it is not mastered by many. But the mastery of an encyclopedic education by a
few is crucial to everyone—those who master it become the exemplars, the
publicly visible repositories of intrinsic cultural authority, who manifest in
the quality of their words and deeds a demonstration that an education worthy of
free men is attainable. All pedagogical authority ultimately derives from their
exemplary presence in the public. Men are emulatory creatures—without the
complete education of a few as visible evidence of what can be attained, the
will to attain an ever-more complete, partial education in the many disappears.
Pedagogical skepticism is neither more nor less than the conclusion, drawn by us
all on encountering around us no persons who seem capable of comprehensive,
informed, considered judgment on the range of questions relevant in a full,
present-day life, that a complete formation of judgment is a futile goal and
that the efforts leading towards it are ultimately without purpose. When wisdom
and vision seem unattainable, people rightly become skeptical of the
institutions whose highest historic function has been the cultivation of these
qualities. Thus, the commitment to popular education is faltering because the
educated elite is faltering in the populace. The reform, invigoration, and
extension of educative effort on every level depends finally on recreating an
effectively educative encyclopedia, and when an effectively educative
encyclopedia is recreated and spread through the public, when men of profound,
considered, and informed judgment manifest themselves within the public, then
the reform, invigoration, and extension of educative effort on every level will
irresistibly follow. Such is my pedagogical conviction.
[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>
 
<p>If we need an educative encyclopedia to revive our system of education, we
need it even more to revive our polity. There is an inherent connection between
the liberal tradition in education and the liberal tradition in public affairs.
And there is an inherent connection between the pedagogical skepticism sapping
our educational institutions and a political skepticism eroding our polity.
Insofar as people feel they do not have the capacity to judge intelligently of
the issues influencing their lives, they do not feel they have anything
significant to contribute to the resolution of public questions. When this is
the case, liberal political institutions become meaningless: when they exist as
they do in the West, they exist as vestigial organs that are no longer used for
the purpose for which they originated. It accomplishes little in the face of
misuses of these institutions to bemoan the vacuity of public deliberation on
difficult issues, to decry popular apathy, to deprecate the hucksterism of
campaigning. These are but symptoms of the underlying political skepticism in
both the public person and the private citizen—both believe themselves incapable
of putting forward informed, considered, personal judgments on the issues;
further they believe no one capable of such judgments. In such a situation high
standards of public discourse lose their meaning. At heart doubting that a
liberal politics is either possible or prudent, both public persons and private
citizens find it sensible to use public affairs as best they can to advance
their personal interests and to employ experts in an ad hoc, self-perpetuating
effort to keep a directionless process from collapsing from within. A vital
liberalism will revive only when the conviction among the people revives that
there are within the public, persons capable of intelligently judging the
issues, that these can coherently articulate their judgments to their peers, and
that therefore the liberal standards of political life perform a real function.
Such persons will be found within the public only when an effective encyclopedic
education is once again in operation. Therefore, the revival of a liberal
politics depends on the revival of a liberal education, for persons endowed with
a fully developed capacity for autonomous judgment will reappear in the public
when an effective encyclopedic education has been revived. Then liberal
political institutions would again be seen as truly functional, and persons of
independent judgment might begin to use them to bring long-range issues of great
complexity into practical political focus. Hence, I believe that should an
encyclopedic education be revived and have an effect in the public, it could
initiate a period of immense historic innovation. Such is my political
conviction.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>
 
<p>In outline, then, the above sketches the book I should like to write. I am,
frankly, surprised and somewhat frightened by it. Were someone to have
suggested, eight months ago on my departure for Germany, that on the eve of my
return I would be proposing such a project, I would have thought him mad. Sometimes
when I consider what I am proposing, I wonder if have spent too much time in
leisured isolation here, away from the bracing criticism of colleagues and the
mundane realities of a normal academic routine. But then I keep coming back to
the thought that it all seems to hang together, that although not an easy
project it is one that I believe can be done, and, most importantly, that it
serves to bring together and give purpose to all the different things I've been
working toward in recent years. Thus, transcending my misgivings, I find that
<i>Man and Judgment</i> is a project in which I believe, in which I believe with
real conviction. Hence I have decided to attempt it, and I should like to
attempt it on behalf for the Academy if that is possible.
[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>
 
<p>With a view to exploring the possibility of such sponsorship, I shall say
something about how I foresee the project developing. The first part of the
book, "The Function of Judgment," presents few difficulties. I am in control of
the literature involved and plan this summer to draft much of this section in
the form of the essay you originally commissioned me to write. Thus I expect to
be able to fulfill your original commission within the space and time limits
that we discussed. My only request with respect to it would be that at a minimum
I be assured of the freedom to use a revision of it in the larger book that I
now contemplate. The last section, "The Future of Judgment," also presents few
serious difficulties—it involves writing two essays relating the ideal of an
encyclopedic education to current problems in pedagogy and politics. I have a
good general grasp of the controversial literatures involved and the relevant
traditions of educational and political theory. Writing this section is
basically a matter of several months spent in sustained concentration on
composing the argument and expanding my command of the literature in accordance
with the needs that appear as the argument unfolds.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>
 
<p>So much for the easy parts: the middle section, "The Formation of Judgment,"
will constitute the bulk of the book and the bulk of the work. It is also the
problematic section. What I propose to do is, as I have explained above, to work
my way through the outline of knowledge offered in <i>Britannica 15</i>,
articulating as best I can the significant, general problems of judgment before
the ideal reader in each of these areas, stating the questions with respect to
these problems that he should want to have spoken to, and assembling as much
material as I can that speaks to these questions. The main pitfall in this
endeavor is that it can become a never-ending undertaking, and to guard against
that I plan to impose a fairly rigorous time-table on the work, at first
devoting no more than a month of sustained concentration to each of the ten
areas. Then I would have to take stock to see what had been accomplished and to
decide where more work was needed. I might have to follow with another cycle of
monthly periods of writing and research, but I want to hold the endeavor within
such confines—my purpose is not single-handedly to write an educative
encyclopedia, but to demonstrate the need for one and the possibility of
creating it.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>
 
<p>Over-all, then, I conceive of writing the book I propose here as a two-year
project running from this coming September. My financial situation is such that
for the foreseeable future I shall either have to teach during summer sessions
or find external research funding for a summer salary, and I should like very
much to do the latter in order to devote as much concentration to the project as
possible. Also, I should like to acquire sets of the <i>Pléiade</i> and the
<i>Rowohlt</i> and certain other books that, as the project develops, appear
central to it. Further, although I do not normally like to work with research
assistants, in this case I anticipate their help being very fruitful in
separating the wheat from chaff in the layman's literature pertinent to various
questions. Finally, I expect that in working through the different areas the
occasion for the productive use of consultants from particular fields will arise
and will be important to achieving high quality in the results. Hence, I would
ideally like to secure funding for the project over the two years roughly on the
following level: $10,000—summer salary, 1976 and 1977, $20,000—employment of
research assistants, $3,000—books, $3,000—consultants fees, plus, inevitably,
the Teachers College overhead charge. I realize that the Academy, itself,
undoubtedly cannot provide such funding, but it is my hope that it could help
find such funding, should it consider <i>Man and Judgment</i> worth encouraging.
[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>
 
<p>Before closing, I should note that I have two substantive reasons for seeking
sponsorship of this project by the Academy. First, in developing the crucial
middle section, I should like to solicit help from persons with diverse
abilities, in articulating the major problems of judgment before the ideal
reader. I think sponsorship by the Academy would facilitate my getting
thoughtful help from persons whose ideas on these matters would be truly worth
having, and getting the best possible assistance here is important to the
success and quality of the project. Second, I hope that the finished work can
have a substantial, constructive impact on current pedagogical discussions. Many
of the positions presently attracting wide interest seem to me to beg the basic
educational question. The fundamental problem of pedagogical judgment is to
think through the human purpose of educative effort and to adapt praxis to the
fulfillment of that purpose. Too much of what is being said about education
currently is not grounded on considered, defensible judgments about the relation
of pedagogical praxis to human purpose: too often one finds at the foundation of
various positions, not reasoned judgments, but unreasoned, sentimental
attachments, sentimental attachments to techniques of experimental psychology
(Skinner et al), to an a-theoretical, quantified empiricism (Jencks, Jensen, et
al) to neo-Marxian social dogma (Marcuse, et al), to romantic anarchism Illich
et al) to public schooling per se (a host of beleaguered professionals), and to
the idealization of childhood (Silberman, Kozol, <i>Summerhill</i>, and so on).
There is much of value in each of these positions, but what seems strikingly
lacking in them is a searching discussion of praxis in relation to purpose. My
highest hope is that <i>Man and Judgment</i> will have an effect, not only
through its internal argument that the formation of judgment ought to be the
human purpose guiding pedagogical praxis, but further as an example of
educational discourse in which the relation of praxis to human purpose is made
inescapably articulate. To achieve such impact, it would greatly help, I
believe, were the book to have support from the Academy, for such support would
ensure that its argument, both in substance and in form, would be dealt with
seriously.  [¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>
 
<p>Please accept my apologies for inflicting, unexpectedly, such a long letter
on you. I hope it at least shows worthwhile progress in my critique of
<i>Britannica 15</i>, and I would value greatly any comments you might have on
the larger project or any suggestions you might have on how I should proceed in
finding further support for it. I realize, however, that you have many demands
on your time, and if this one should seem excessive, please ignore it.
[¶{{#counter:in1}}:]</p>

Latest revision as of 14:37, 3 November 2024

<title>Texts:Adams Education/0</title>

THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS

EDITOR'S PREFACE

[¶1:]&nbsp;&nbsp;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.

[¶2:]&nbsp;&nbsp;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 to multiplicity. The scheme became unmanageable as he approached his end.

[¶3:]&nbsp;&nbsp;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.

[¶4:]&nbsp;&nbsp;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 XXXIII 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.

[¶5:]&nbsp;&nbsp;The Massachusetts Historical Society now publishes theEducation as it was printed in 1907, with only such 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.

HENRY CABOT LODGE, &nbsp;&nbsp;September, 1918

PREFACE

[¶6:]&nbsp;&nbsp;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 I 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!'"

[¶7:]&nbsp;&nbsp;Jean Jacques was a very great educator in the manner of the eighteenth century, and has been commonly thought to have had more influence than any other teacher of his time; but his peculiar 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 religious 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.

[¶8:]&nbsp;&nbsp;As an unfortunate 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.

[¶9:]&nbsp;&nbsp;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 young 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.

[¶10:]&nbsp;&nbsp;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 object 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.

[¶11:]&nbsp;&nbsp;The manikin, therefore, has the same value as any other geometrical figure of three or more dimensions, which is used for the study of relation. For that purpose it cannot be spared; it is the only measure of motion, of proportion, of human condition; it must have the air of reality; must be taken for real; must be treated as though it had life. Who knows? Possibly it had!

February 16, 1907

</text>

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