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 movement might be studied at once in
philosophy and mechanics. Setting himself to the task, he began a
volume which he mentally knew as 'Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres:
a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity.' From that point he proposed
to fix a position for himself, which he could label: 'The
Education of Henry Adams: a Study of Twentieth-Century
Multiplicity.' With the help of these two points of relation, he
hoped to project his lines forward and backward indefinitely,
subject to correction from any one who should know better."

The "Chartres" was finished and privately printed in 1904. The
"Education" proved to be more difficult. The point on which the
author failed to please himself, and could get no light from
readers or friends, was the usual one of literary form. Probably
he saw it in advance, for he used to say, half in jest, that his
great ambition was to complete St. Augustine's "Confessions," but
that St. Augustine, like a great artist, had worked from
multiplicity to unity, while he, like a small one, had to reverse
the method and work back from unity to multiplicity. The scheme
became unmanageable as he approached his end.

Probably he was, in fact, trying only to work into it his
favorite theory of history, which now fills the last three or