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Adams, Henry, 1838-1918

"The Education of Henry Adams"

Thomas at least linked together
the joints of his machine. As far as a superficial student could
follow, the thirteenth century supposed mind to be a mode of
force directly derived from the intelligent prime motor, and the
cause of all form and sequence in the universe -- therefore the
only proof of unity. Without thought in the unit, there could be
no unity; without unity no orderly sequence or ordered society.
Thought alone was Form. Mind and Unity flourished or perished
together.
This education startled even a man who had dabbled in fifty
educations all over the world; for, if he were obliged to insist
on a Universe, he seemed driven to the Church. Modern science
guaranteed no unity. The student seemed to feel himself, like all
his predecessors, caught, trapped, meshed in this eternal
drag-net of religion.
In practice the student escapes this dilemma in two ways: the
first is that of ignoring it, as one escapes most dilemmas; the
second is that the Church rejects pantheism as worse than
atheism, and will have nothing to do with the pantheist at any
price. In wandering through the forests of ignorance, one
necessarily fell upon the famous old bear that scared children at
play; but, even had the animal shown more logic than its victim,
one had learned from Socrates to distrust, above all other traps,
the trap of logic -- the mirror of the mind.


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