Looking Back at an Education

The Education of Henry Adams 

by Henry Brooks Adams

"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." (from the Preface - The Education of Henry Adams)


I have read several great confessional autobiographies over the years, Augustine and Rousseau come to mind, but my favorite is Henry Adams' narrative, The Education of Henry Adams. The Preface and four opening chapters provide a solid foundation for the entire book. They focus on his youth in Massachusetts and time spent in Washington, D. C. and at Harvard College through his twentieth year.

His attention points to the nature of his own education growing up in a family whose very name was synonymous with the Presidency of the United States. Born in 1838, both his Great Grandfather and Grandfather had been presidents, while his father looked forward to an Ambassadorship to England during the Civil War. Henry's education would be continued during that period as secretary to his father. But first he narrates the experience of growing up torn by family connections between the small town of Quincy and the metropolis of Boston.

The two towns provide just one of the contrasts that concern young Henry; contrasts that include town (Boston) versus country (Quincy), Winter versus Summer, and his own family ties between the Brooks of Boston on his mother's side and the Adams on his father's side. It was the interstices between these and other contrasting experiences that provided young Henry with the "seeds of moral education". Even this early in his life, as he reflects from the view of the twentieth century, he questioned what and who he was and where he was going with his life.

The community and culture that formed Henry's mind and being included family friends that would become historical figures for those of us born in the latter half of the succeeding century; figures that included, in addition to his family, Ellery Channing, Waldo Emerson, Richard Henry Dana, and above all for Henry, his hero, Charles Sumner. Henry worshiped the Senator and Orator and looked up to New England statesmen like him that expressed "the old Ciceronian idea of government by the best". People like Daniel Webster and Edward Everett who governed Massachusetts. Henry, however, was destined to move on to Washington with his father as the Adams family had for decades been a part of the national stage.

Henry did not like school and rather preferred the free play with his peers. In spite of his opinion of school it is clear that he was continuing his education at home and was soon to move back north to enter Harvard College in his sixteenth hear. His thoughts on his education at that time rang true to this reader as he described his travel to Washington, not as what happened but as what he remembered. And this was "what struck him most, to remain fresh in his mind all his life-time, . . the sudden change that came over the world on entering a slave State. He took education politically."  His time in Washington ended with a remark that "he had no education", a continuing contradiction that stemmed from his own reaction to the "official" education he was undergoing in schools that contrasted (once more see above) with the true education in which his experience was creating memories.

Harvard does not suit his taste either - the curriculum had no particular quality that could impress the man that Henry was becoming; a man who was not only a reader but a writer. He was impressed by Russell Lowell who "had brought back from Germany the only new and valuable part of its Universities, the habit of allowing students to read with him privately in his study. Adams asked the privilege, and used it to read a little, and to talk a great deal."  His friendship with Lowell led him to connections with the transcendentalists although he never became one. He also became friends with one Robert E. Lee at Harvard and enjoyed a coterie of Virginian friends despite their Southern ways.  At the end of his formal education he was able to conclude that "As yet he knew nothing."  A bit of harsh judgment for the Senior Class Orator, but great minds are sometimes hardest on themselves.

The remainder of the autobiography takes him on a journey through Darwin and Chicago and "The Dynamo and the Virgin" into the beginning of the twentieth century.  His story is always interesting and his prose is some of the best I have encountered. I may comment further on it as I continue to read and reread about his thoughts on a very particular education.

American Dynasty

America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918 
by Richard Brookhiser

“So Henry Adams, well aware that he could not succeed as a scholar, and finding his social position beyond improvement or need of effort, betook himself to the single ambition which otherwise would scarcely have seemed a true outcome of the college, though it was the last remnant of the old Unitarian supremacy. He took to the pen. He wrote.”   ― Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

Richard Brookhiser has written biographies of Presidents Madison and Washington, revolutionary statesmen Hamilton and Gouvernor Morris, and most recently a book on Lincoln, but my favorite of his biographies that I have read is America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918. The dates alone, spanning three centuries, suggest the significance of this family on the history of the United States.

The first two of the dynasty, John and his son John Quincy both became President. The father was one of the leaders of the American Revolution while the son was both President and, later, member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts. John's grandson Charles Francis also had a brilliant political career that included a term as Minister to England in the Lincoln Administration. The fourth Adams of this dynasty, John's great grandson Henry Adams, found his greatness in literature both as an academic historian and with the publication of his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, a classic that is read to this day.

Their story begins with John Adams, a self-taught lawyer who rode horseback to meet clients, and ends with Henry Adams in France as World War I begins and he returns to Washington, D. C. This is a well told overview of a family dynasty that more than any other helped make the United States the great nation it is today.

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Let him become Man

A Canticle for Leibowitz

by Walter M. Miller Jr.

“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”   ― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz


With references to Dante and the Roman Catholic liturgy, among others, this is an uncommon example of speculative fiction. Combining post-apocalyptic history with three sections set centuries apart in the distant future the reader begins to encounter science fiction in the form of spaceships that can travel beyond the solar system only in the final of the three novellas that form the body of this novel. A Canticle for Liebowitz is one of few science fiction novels that have religion as a primary focus. That it is able to provide the depth of character and levels of meaning that transcend the genre explains its standing in popularity and its well-deserved Hugo Award more than fifty years ago.
The structure of the novel is tripartite with novella-length sections each focused on a small portion of future history each of which indicates the direction that mankind has come in the centuries since the previous section and what direction may be expected in the following centuries. The story begins about six hundred years in the future and each of the subsequent sections are about six hundred years further in the future.
The first section, "Fiat Homo" (let him become man),  is the longest and seemingly the simplest story, focusing on a novitiate, Brother Francis Gerard, in the southwestern desert of what was once the United States. His discovery of artifacts that may be relics of Isaac Edward Liebowitz, the founder of the order to which Brother Gerard belongs, sets off a chain of events culminating in the Sainthood of Liebowitz and in a journey of discovery and heroism for Brother Gerard. While the emphasis is very much on the spiritual life of Gerard and the Order, there is also a focus on history and historiography that plays out like a detective story allowing the reader to identify some of what has happened to the World since the end of the Twentieth Century. The succeeding two sections each bring history forward very slowly, first showing the rise of science and its battles with Christendom in the Thirty-second century, and then portraying the inevitable (or not) repetition of history in the final section, "Fiat Voluntas Tua" (thy will be done).
Cyclic in its portrayal of history, the novel can be frustrating and pessimistic in outlook or positive in its picture of progress, depending on the views of the reader, and his particular religious views. The second section, "Fiat Lux" (let there be light) was the most intriguing and inspirational for this reader as the discovery of the method for producing artificial light by one of the Brothers was portrayed in a manner that echoed the narrative of Henry Adams famous chapter, "The Dynamo and the Virgin", from his magnificent The Education of Henry Adams. While one of the Order of Liebowitz discovers the secret of artificial light it is a secular scientist, Thon Taddeo, who leads the world to further discoveries and represents "a new Renaissance".(p 168)
This is a rich and complex novel that rewards the careful reader (and rereader). One suggestion: The reader may need to dust off his Latin dictionary and perhaps a serious English dictionary also. Interesting both for its characters and the detail imagining of the monastic life it depicts the integration of these in a world recovering from a long sleep. In part it mirrors the actual history of the last two millenia, but the story is not simply one about the repetition of history, but a unique tale that speculates on the nature of man and his place in the universe.


A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Harper Perennial, 1986 (1959)