Chiefly, London was the stimulus that shaped Adams' education and his historical viewpoints. Ironically, Adams shared his negative English stereotypes, starting in Chapter 12. "The English mind was one-sided, eccentric, systematically unsystematic and logically illogical. The less one knew of it the better."7 Surprisingly, Adams carried residue of a family resentment for the English from the American Revolution. During the American Civil War, the resentment was further intensified by social and political conditions in London. Nevertheless, his heritage and his concepts of legal justice were fundamentally British. For Adams, London represented a repository of diverse values. With Adams' love for complexity, London was the perfect for him to explore the perplexities of Christianity and technology, maturing into an educated man indeed.
Conclusion
Adams gained a deeper appreciation, but he never fully understood the technology...
The Education of Henry Adams is ironic because the more Adams learned, the less he understood. What began as a voyage of discovery ended in "The Abyss of Ignorance." With time comes great change that propels society forward for new challenges. Since forces were inevitable, such challenges and changes were not to be feared but to be embraced. Emphatically as described by Adams, it was imperative that man developed a leap in intellect to manage such technological advances that perhaps may be fully understood in the future. Therefore, Adams stated it well, 'Mankind could count on such certainties as "Unity, Continuity, Purpose, Order, Law, Truth, the Universe, God"; however, science would remove these certainties, only to replace them with "Multiplicity, Diversity, Complexity, Anarchy, Chaos."3
7 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston:…
