teresting
people of his generation, devoted himself at leisure to the study of art
and literature, philosophy and science, and wrote, as an incident in a long
life of serious endeavor, twelve or fifteen volumes of history which by
common consent rank with the best work done in that field by American
scholars.

By no common standard does such a record measure failure. Most men would
have been satisfied with the life he lived apart from the books he wrote,
or with the books he wrote apart from the life he lived. Henry Adams is
commonly counted with the historians; but he scarcely thought of himself as
one, except in so far as he sought and failed to find a philosophy of
history. It is characteristic that in the _Education_ he barely mentions
the _History of the United States_. The enterprise, which he undertook for
lack of something better, he always regarded as negligible--an episode in
his life to be chronicled like any other. But it is safe to say that most
of us who call ourselves historians, with far less justification, would be
well content if we could count, as the result of a lifetime of effort, such
a shelfful of volumes to our credit. The average professor of history might
well expect, on less showing, to be chosen president of the Historical
Association; in which case the prospect of having to deliver a presidential
address might lead him to speculate idly in idle moments upon the meaning
of history; but the riddle of existence would not greatly trouble his
sleep, nor could it be said of him, as Henry Adams said of himself, that "a
historical formula that should satisfy the conditions of the stellar
universe weighed heavily upon his mind." He would live out the remnant of
his days, an admired and a feted leader in the scholar's world, wholly
unaware that his life had been a cosmic failure.

* * * * *

It is not likely that many readers will see the tragedy of a failure that
looks like success, or miss the philosophy-clothes that were never found.
And indeed we may all be well content with the doings of this manikin that
turns out to be so lively an ego. Henry Adams was worth a wilderness of
philosophies. Perhaps we should have liked the book better if he could have
taken himself more frankly, as a matter of course, for what he was--a man
of wide experience, of altogether uncommon attainments, of extraordinarily
incisive mental power; and if, resting on this assumption, he had tol