Henry Adams: The Middle Years by Ernest Samuels; Henry Adams: The Major Phase by ErnestSamuelsReview by: W. Stull HoltThe American Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 2 (Jan., 1966), pp. 709-711Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1846556 .

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Am nericas 709

dominating influence over American scholarship in the social sciences, and the emergence of an American social science.

Herbst sees the influence of the German historical school on two levels. The German-trained American social scientists made the German university the model for their successful reorganization of American institutions of higher learning. The gentleman-scholar gave way to the specialist; the graduate school took its place at the side of the liberal arts college; professional organizations and journals were founded; the seminar was introduced; and methods of philological and his- torical criticism were adopted. On another level, that of ideas, the transfer was less successful. The theoretical basis of the historical school rested on what Herbst has described as the empirical idealism of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Leopold von Ranke, which assumed that the phenomenal world was merely a reflection of the great ideas and forces underlying history and that a strictly historical method that approached institutions and social norms in terms of their concrete individuality and avoided generalizations was the sole valid approach to the study of human affairs. In Herbst's opinion, Adams and Burgess were guided by this idealism in their attempt to make history into a rigidly scientific discipline; Small and Ely adopted the idealistic conception of the state in their critique of laissez-faire doc- trine. Herbst ascribes the failure of the historical school in America as a system of thought to two factors: its incompatibility with American conditions and the con- tradiction contained in its philosophy of value, which led to the "crisis of histori- cism" once the confidence in the unity of all science had been destroyed. The in- sistence of the historical school on the uniqueness of all values and institutions ruled out the possibility that norms of behavior could be scientifically prescribed, a dilemma out of which, Herbst thinks, Albion Small's and John Dewey's prag- matic conception of history as an open-ended process may have pointed the way.

This book is an outstanding contribution to the understanding of the theoret- ical framework in which the social sciences emerged in America. I wonder, how- ever, whether men like Adams and Burgess understood the ideological content of the German historical school quite as fully as Herbst suggests. Their great confi- dence in specialization, laboratory techniques, and biological analogies reflects attitudes more typical of late nineteenth-century thought in general than of the German historical school. Its great representatives, for example Ranke and Droysen, avoided overspecialization and placed intuitive Verstehen above em- piricism. Much of the idealistic heritage had already been dissipated when these five Americans went to Germany. Idealistic elements survived, as Herbst rightly stresses, in the American disciples' reassessment of the state and their historicist philosophy of value.

State University of New York, Bufalo GEORG G. IGGERS

HENRY ADAMS: THE MIDDLE YEARS. By Ernest Samuels. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. I958. PP. xiv, 5I4. $7.50.)

HENRY ADAMS: THE MAJOR PHASE. By Ernest Samuels. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. I964. Pp. xv, 687. $IO.OO.)

PROFESSOR Samuels has now completed his biography of Henry Adams, to which he devoted twenty years and which, in addition to being the most intensive study of the life and mind of Adams, is a notable achievement in biography.

The first volume, The Young Henry Adams, appeared in I948 (AHR, LIV

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7IO Reviews of Books

[July I949], 894); the second volume, Henry Adams: The Middle Years, was published in I958 and strangely was not reviewed in the American Historical Re- view. The omission is amazing since it covers the years from I877 to I890, during which the History was written.

It was possible to say in a review of the I948 volume that "none of the full- length biographies rumored during the past generation has been carried to com- pletion." In the ten years before the second volume appeared, five valuable and scholarly books on Henry Adams were published. Only one of them, that by Jordy, was the work of a historian. Three others, those by Baym, Hume, and Levenson, were the works of professors of English and emphasized various aspects of the intellectual life of Adams. The one book that is a biography of the man was by a librarian, Miss Stevenson.

Ernest Samuels is also a professor of English literature, a fact that is of some consequence for those who read the Review. Penetrating and thoughtful as this study is, it reveals the scholarly associations of its author. His analysis of the famous History begins with a comparison with Tolstoi's War and Peace. It is typical that he quotes a professor of literature saying the History is the "greatest historical work in English, with the possible exception of the Decline and Fall," and not the professor of history who said with greater cogency that the History "for clarity, tight construction, and sheer intelligence applied to the exposition of a great theme, had not then, and has not since been equaled by any American his- torian." Of much greater moment, he devotes about as much space to the two novels of Adams as to the History. The novels are significant to a biographer, but as novels they are not noteworthy or enduring works of art while the History most certainly is both great art and scholarship. Professional historians will note the almost complete absence of references to other American historians, or to earlier and later interpretations of the period. They will also miss answers to many other questions that inevitably arise in historiographical studies.

Other riches are abundantly available. The volume presents the best account so far of the salon which Adams and his wife maintained in Washington and which deserves a chapter in the history of American intellectual life. It contains a perceptive and sympathetic picture of his marriage and its tragic ending, although many unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, questions remain.

The second volume benefited somewhat from the Adams Papers that had been made available in I954. The third volume takes full advantage of that huge collec- tion, of which Samuels correctly says, "If the immensely enlarged record reveals a brilliant mind in the grip of many prejudices and contradictions, it also shows a terrifyingly honest one, which more than ever defies a simple formula to explain it." Adams was a compulsive writer of what must surely be among the most chal- lenging, revealing, and fascinating letters of the nineteenth century. They permit Samuels to give for the first time a satisfactory account of the relations between Adams and Mrs. Don Cameron. A rich and romantic love for each other emerged and flowered after the death of Mrs. Adams. But in this major phase of his life Adams proved to be a genuine and poignant failure. Fulfillment and marriage were impossible for them, not because of the difference of twenty years in age but because both were bound by the fastidious and prudish mores of the Victorian era. It was not the emptiness of his life nor, as some have surmised, a sense of guilt because he had not been able to prevent the suicide of his wife that sent him

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Americas 71I

in I890 on his yearlong trip to the South Pacific. Mrs. Cameron sent him in an ex- cess of caution to make certain that the scrupulously correct pattern of their lives should not be disturbed.

Also illuminated are the relations between Henry and his brother Brooks, who entered into Henry's intellectual life to a greater extent than had previously been realized. Most of the third volume is devoted to Henry's attempt to formulate a philosophy of history. Here the development of thought going into The Education and Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres and into his later, briefer, yet equally daring if less successful writings is traced. Jordy's conclusion that Adams was a rank amateur in science is not overturned although the correspondence between Adams and various scientists now available testifies to his effort to be informed. One field of science that emerged during this period of Adams' life but of which he was completely unaware was Freudian psychology. Almost certainly he would have re- jected Freud's findings with the same moral repugnance that other intellectuals of his generation displayed. But a biographer should recognize that in Adams' case the use of Freudian insights would bring increased understanding. Samuels made no such attempt.

In spite of the abundant wealth of the new materials in this biography and of the intelligence and literary skill with which they are used, there are still oppor- tunities for more studies of Henry Adams. And so provocative is the challenge of his mind and life it is safe to predict that they will be made.

University of Washington W. STULL HOLT

RAILROADS AND REGULATION, I877-I9I6. By Gabriel Kolko. (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press. I965. Pp. Vii, 273. $5.00.)

AT least for the period in which the railroad was a leading force in the nation's economic development, federal regulation of railroads, which began in I887, was a key factor in the development of the United States as a modern welfare state. In this area the historian has long been interested in delineating the economic inter- ests behind these regulations. For a time it was held that the western farmers, angered by the extortions and discriminations of the railroads, were the pro- pelling force. Some added or stressed that the major group was the Pennsylvania petroleum producers who sought to eliminate the favoritism shown by railroads through the rebates they gave to the powerful Standard Oil interests.

In the last twenty years two additional groups have been credited as the chief instigators of federal regulation: certain merchant groups and shippers who com- plained of discriminatory rates and some important railroad executives. Professor Kolko insists that the railroads were "the most important ... advocates of federal regulation from I877 to I9I6." The original stimulus for their support, the author asserts, was the breakdown of voluntary pooling agreements, which were designed to prevent "cutthroat competition," and the almost simultaneous great railroad strike of I877, which "pointed to the danger of attacks . . . from the workers . . . [,] from the states and the Granger movement." "The primary commitment of the major directors of [the Interstate Commerce] Commission policy was essentially pro-railroad"; for example, the first chairman was Thomas M. Cooley, who "com- pletely identified himself with the railroads' interests." This position was further strengthened by the attitude of the progressive Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt

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