Henry Adams's Theory of History: A Puritan Defense

Abstract

CLARENCE KING once had a dream in which he thought the mind of Henry Adams was noisily moving about the room, overturning tables and chairs. Upon waking, he discovered an enormous rat had entered his Rocky Mountain cabin and was creating the disturbance. Had he devoted his faculties to the task, King would probably not have improved upon this fable of his subconscious, unless he had added that Adams's mind, which neither slumbered nor slept, was a Puritan mind, insisting upon the moral character of the universe. In a less complex nature than the angelic porcupine's this combination of reason and morality would not be remarkable. But the vast realms which lie beyond reason and beyond morality were equally familiar to Adams realms apprehended only by the intuition and the imagination, whither the mind does not follow with felicity. Their existence was known to him all his life. From the time when, as a boy, he was overpowered by the scent of the catalpa trees in Washington until his enthrallment by St. Gauden's statue, Adams was susceptible to influences which his intellect could not understand. Yet the com-