Henry Adams' Dualisms

A  List of Adams' Dualisms

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.

"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

"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."

"[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