The Education of Henry Adams is an autobiographical meditation by the American historian Henry Adams, written in the third person. It traces his upbringing, diplomatic service, and encounters with politics, science, and religion across the nineteenth century, asking how a modern person can be educated amid rapid change. It offers a reflective view of American intellectual life.
For teachers and schools: paste the code into your site or blog.
Cover illustration generated by AI.
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS Henry Adams CONTENTS EDITOR'S PREFACE By Henry Cabot Lodge PREFACE I. QUINCY (1838-1848) II. BOSTON (1848-1854) III. WASHINGTON (1850-1854) IV. HARVARD COLLEGE (1854-1858) V. BERLIN (1858-1859) VI. ROME (1859-1860) VII. TREASON (1860-1861) VIII. DIPLOMACY (1861) IX. FOES OR FRIENDS (1862) X. POLITICAL MORALITY (1862) XI. THE BATTLE OF THE RAMS (1863) XII. ECCENTRICITY (1863) XIII. THE PERFECTION OF HUMAN SOCIETY (1864) XIV. DILETTANTISM (1865-1866) XV. DARWINISM (1867-1868) XVI. THE PRESS (1868) XVII. PRESIDENT GRANT (1869) XVIII. FREE FIGHT (1869-1870) XIX. CHAOS (1870) XX. FAILURE (1871) XXI. TWENTY YEARS AFTER (1892) XXII. CHICAGO (1893) XXIII. SILENCE (1894-1898) XXIV. INDIAN SUMMER (1898-1899) XXV. THE DYNAMO AND THE VIRGIN (1900) XXVI. TWILIGHT (1901) XXVII. TEUFELSDRÖCKH (1901) XXVIII. THE HEIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE (1902)
XXIX. THE ABYSS OF IGNORANCE (1902) XXX. VIS INERTIAE (1903) XXXI. THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE (1903) XXXII. VIS NOVA (1903-1904) XXXIII. A DYNAMIC THEORY OF HISTORY (1904) XXXIV. A LAW OF ACCELERATION (1904) XXXV. NUNC AGE (1905) 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
Readnara
