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The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Adams
Preface
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!' "
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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