Henry
Adams' Dualisms |

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The following is a partial list of
the dualisms that Adams explores/creates in his writing. Not all necessarily belong
in the same column, but in general, the ones on the left represent human constructions of
unity, while the ones on the right represent chaotic reality, though this perhaps is also
a human construction. |
Unity
Finite
Virgin
Love
Drama
Thought
Town
Boston
New England
Eighteenth-century
Discipline
Restraint
Law
Uniformity
Winter
Old
Direction
John Quincy Adams
Lake Geneva
Mercy
Wenlock Abbey
Energy
"God"
Sexual Energy/ Reproduction
Order
Form
Beauty
Progress
Human Ideas
Metaphysics
Silence |
Multiplicity
Infinite
Dynamo
All Other Force
Machine
Action
Country
Quincy
Washington D.C.
Twentieth-century
Freedom
Liberty
Outlawry
Diversity
Summer
New
Space
Louisa Adams
Mont Blanc
Justice
Franco-Prussian War
Decay
"Satan" (also "God")
Energy w/o sex
Chaos
Formless
Horror
Entropy
Nature
Physics
Prayer |
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Images
are not arguments, rarely even lead to proof, but the mind craves them, and, of late more
than ever, especially if contradictions; since the human mind has already learned to deal
in contradictions"
-- "A Law of Acceleration (1904)" (XXXIV)
"The Universal has no
limit. Thought
Travelling in constant circles, round and round,
Must ever pass through endless contradictions,
Returning on itself at last, till lost
In silence"
-- "Buddha and Brahma"
"Silence alone is
respectable and respected. I believe God to be Silence"
-- Letter to Margaret Chanler, 1905 |
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"Without the conviction
of her personal presence, men would not have been inspired; but, to us, it is rather the
inspiration of the art which proves the Virgin's presence, and we can better see the
conviction of it in the work than in the words. Every day, as the work went on, the
Virgin was present, directing the architects" "One
sees her personal presence on every side. Anyone can feel it who will only consent
to feel like a child. Sitting here any Sunday afternoon, while the voices of the
children of the maitrise are chanting in the choir, -- your mind held in the
grasp of the strong lines and shadows of the architecture; your eyes flooded with the
autumn tones of the glass; your ears drowned with the purity of the voices; one sense
reacting upon another until sensation reaches the limit of its range; -- you or any other
lost soul, could, if you cared to look and listen, feel a sense beyond the human ready to
reveal a sense divine that would make that world once more intelligible, and would bring
the Virgin to life again, in all the depth of feeling which she shows here [. . .] but
what is still more convincing, he could, at will, in an instant, shatter the whole art by
calling into it a single motive of his own." |

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"[T]hat the
Virgin was by essence illogical, unreasonable, and feminine, is the only fact of any
ultimate value worth studying [. . .] Why did the gentle and gracious Virgin Mother so
exasperate the Pilgrim Father? Why was the Woman struck out of the Church and
ignored in the State? These questions are not antiquarian or trifling in historical
value; they tug at the very heart-strings of all that makes whatever order is in the
cosmos. If Unity exists, in which and towards which all energies centre, it must
explain and include Duality, Diversity, Infinity -- Sex!" -- Mont Saint Michel and Chartes |
Click here for a
summary of Adams' Philosophy |
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