Probably this was the moment of highest knowledge that a
scholar could ever reach. He had under his eyes the whole
educational staff of the Government at a time when the Government
had just reached the heights of highest activity and influence.
Since 1860, education had done its worst, under the greatest
masters and at enormous expense to the world, to train these two
minds to catch and comprehend every spring of international
action, not to speak of personal influence; and the entire
machinery of politics in several great countries had little to do
but supply the last and best information. Education could be
carried no further.
With its effects on Hay, Adams had nothing to do; but its
effects on himself were grotesque. Never had the proportions of
his ignorance looked so appalling. He seemed to know nothing --
to be groping in darkness -- to be falling forever in space; and
the worst depth consisted in the assurance, incredible as it
seemed, that no one knew more. He had, at least, the mechanical
assurance of certain values to guide him -- like the relative
intensities of his Coal-powers, and relative inertia of his
Gun-powers -- but he conceived that had he known, besides the
mechanics, every relative value of persons, as well as he knew
the inmost thoughts of his own Government -- had the Czar and the
Kaiser and the Mikado turned schoolmasters, like Hay, and taught
him all they knew, he would still have known nothing.
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