BOOKS
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Often Mr. Kirk overestimates his heroes as fully as he underesti–
mates his opponents. Henry Adams, for example, is characterized as
the "best historian, and possibly the most penetrating critic of ideas"
in American letters (later Paul Elmer More is described as a critic of
ideas perhaps without peer in England or America, since Coleridge).
Adams'
The Degradatwn of the Democratic Dogma
is explained with
admiration-although Adams is chided for his lack of "Christian ortho–
doxy," which holds that "man's fate is not dependent upon the vicissi–
tudes of this planet"-as showing the decline of human society due to
the running-down of energy in accordance with the Laws of Thermody–
namics. But we are warned not to be annoyed by Adams' work (which
in this case rests on a sheer confusion of value and energy). Mr. Kirk
tells us: "The best cure for vexation with Henry Adams is to read his
detractors; for against his Olympian amusement at a dying world and
his real inner modesty, their snarls and quibbles furnish a relief which
displays Adams' learning and wit as no amount of adulation could."
It is interesting that Mr. Kirk chose to emphasize Adams' learning and
wit, for there is one of his "detractors" who also mentioned them. When
an essay later published in the
Degradation
first came out in 1910,
William James wrote Adams about it: "To tell the truth, it doesn't
impress me at all, save by its wit and erudition; and I ask you whether
an old man soon about to meet his Maker can hope to save hunself
from the consequences of his life by pointing to the wit and learning
he has shown in treating a tragic subject." So much for Adams'
"Olympian amusement at a dying world"!
The "penetrating critic of ideas" had his own ideas so sharply re–
futed in James's letter that he capitulated totally in a letter of his own.
James was so amused by Adams' intellectual feebleness that he sent
him a postcard; "Yours of the 20th, just arriving, pleases me by its
docility of spirit and passive subjection to philosophic opinion. Never,
never pretend to an opinion of your own! That way lies every annoy–
ance and madness!"
Of his last hero in this volume, George Santayana, whose avowed
materialism fits Mr. Kirk's "Christian orthodoxy" so badly, he says
"though exerting so strong an influence on American thought [he]
never confessed himself to be an American." In Santayana's final con–
sideration of his own place as a thinker, his
Apologia Pro Mente Sua,
he
writes, "it is as an American writer that I must be counted, if I am
counted at all."
Mr. Kirk is much worse in describing the beliefs of liberals than
in any of his dealings with conservatives, reaching his nadir as he comes
