think my is fit for any public. It is only proofsheets, full of errors, and I’ve not given ‘Education’ it to any library here. The more I watch the coming public the more likely I think it that the public of fifty years hence will be something quite different from the past.” What Adams liked in Augustine, he told William James, was notion of writing a “the story with an end and object, not for the sake of the object, but for the form.” The Education’s parity with Augustine’s is clearest in the final chapters that elaborate Adams’s Confessions dynamic theory of history. Adams admitted that these were influenced by Augustine, intended to replicate the and books that conclude the Augustine’s Confessions. “Father,” “Son,” “Spirit” through God resulted in these philosophical treatises; Adams’s search results in his scientific theories of history, which he would continue in his final writings. Like with Augustine, then, Adams’s objective was that the text educate only insofar as it motivate other readers to or at the very least to draw some philosophical value from these final theories. But Adams’s most significant inheritance from Augustine is his appeal to authority to define the self. Augustine’s first goal was self-examination through a conversation with God: “do not go outward; return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth.” According to Charles Taylor, Augustine was the first to experiment with reflexivity,” to evaluate experience “radical itself rather than simply live it. From this first-person experience, Taylor writes, Augustine proved God’s existence: am aware of my own sensing and thinking; and in reflecting on this, I “I am made aware of its dependence on something beyond it, something common.” In the Augustine says to God that gather me from my own scatterings, after I have Confessions, “you torn myself from your unity and fallen apart into multiplicity.” Adams takes from Augustine his use of and multiplicity” to describe education through authority. In the preface, he wrote “unity St. Augustine, like a great artist, had worked from multiplicity to unity, while he, like a “that
think my ‘Education’ is fit for any public. It is only proofsheets, full of errors, and I’ve not given it to any library here. The more I watch the coming public the more likely I think it that the public of fifty years hence will be something quite different from the past.” What Adams liked in Augustine, he told William James, was “the notion of writing a story with an end and object, not for the sake of the object, but for the form.” The Education’s parity with Augustine’s Confessions is clearest in the final chapters that elaborate Adams’s dynamic theory of history. Adams admitted that these were influenced by Augustine, intended to replicate the “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” books that conclude the Confessions. Augustine’s through God resulted in these philosophical treatises; Adams’s search results in his scientific theories of history, which he would continue in his final writings. Like with Augustine, then, Adams’s objective was that the text educate only insofar as it motivate other readers to or at the very least to draw some philosophical value from these final theories. But Adams’s most significant inheritance from Augustine is his appeal to authority to define the self. Augustine’s first goal was self-examination through a conversation with God: “do not go outward; return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth.” According to Charles Taylor, Augustine was the first to experiment with “radical reflexivity,” to evaluate experience itself rather than simply live it. From this first-person experience, Taylor writes, Augustine proved God’s existence: “I am aware of my own sensing and thinking; and in reflecting on this, I am made aware of its dependence on something beyond it, something common.” In the Confessions, Augustine says to God that “you gather me from my own scatterings, after I have torn myself from your unity and fallen apart into multiplicity.” Adams takes from Augustine his use of “unity and multiplicity” to describe education through authority. In the preface, he wrote “that St. Augustine, like a great artist, had worked from multiplicity to unity, while he, like a
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