Henry Adams

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Hermetic America – Our Critical Heritage:
James Fenimore Cooper, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Adams, Mark Twain
Presentation 7 of 13

Henry Adams:
Apexes of Civilization. Mont Saint Michel and Chartres
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, May 16, 1985

Transcript:
The date is May 16th, 1985. This is a seventh lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir on our critical heritage. Tonight's lecture is the second lecture on Henry Adams. The Apexes of Civilization, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres.
Perhaps we should begin. I'm sorry that there are so few. But quality outweighs quantity.
**inaudible comment from the room**
Even one is plenty.
Right.
Henry Adams is far more esoteric tarot cards or Kabbalah. It is much more here. And we have gotten to a fulcrum that he has very dear to this time. Talking about the feminine, the place of the feminine in a psychology. The place of the feminine in a religion. The value of the feminine that is lacking in the modern world.
Henry Adams had this to write of the 12th century.
The superiority of the woman was not a fancy but a fact. Man's business was to fight or hunt. Or to feast or make love. The man was also the traveling partner in commerce, commonly absent from home for months together. While the woman carried on the business. The woman ruled the household and the workshop. Cared for economy. Supplied the intelligence and dictated the taste. Her ascendancy was secured by her alliance with the church into which she sent her most intelligent children. And a priest or clerk for the most part counted socially as a woman. Both physically and mentally, the woman was robust. As the men often complained. And she did not greatly resent being treated as a man.
And he goes on in this fashion.
It is a difficult at first glance to conceive of this in that it's so simple. The crusades stopped the manpower of Europe. All of the noble men had to go off and fight. And so, they whole upper echelon of European society in its masculine form were off for years on end to the Holy land. To the crusades, which meant that the upper echelon of European society was controlled exclusively by women. So that only the priests were left as viable, intelligent man in the European community.
And through the 12th century into the 13th century, the place of the feminine and European society was dominant. This accounts for the Virgin Mary becoming again, all over again, the archetype of presentation of the divinity. Eclipsing the Trinity. Eclipsing Jesus. Eclipsing God. Becoming herself. The matrix within which the divine happens. Adams writes this way.
True it was, although one should not say it jestingly that the Virgin embarrass the Trinity. And perhaps this was the reason behind all the other excellent reasons why men loved and adored her with a passion such as no other deity has ever inspired. And why we, although utter strangers to her, are not far from getting down on our knees and praying to her still.
Many concentrated, Mary concentrated in herself the whole rebellion of man against state. The whole protest against divine law. The whole contempt for human law as its outcome. The whole hon fury of human nature beating itself against the walls of its prison house. And suddenly seized by a hope that in the Virgin man had found a door of escape. The Virgin Mary was a transcendental exit from the over countified, over stultified, over militarized society, that progressively as the decades went on and the crusades became more and more brutalized. And in response to the somber men returning from the crusades. Disgusted with their silence with what they have seen. Determined to somehow change their lives by what had happened. The women were the continuity. Not some psychological idea. It was a social fact. It was an element of life. And the Virgin Mary was the Goddess of the women who also understood that life needs to have continuity. And that the continuity needs to have fresh air from beyond. And so, the Virgin Mary became a portal to the transcendental realm.
As Henry Adams wrote,
She was above law. She took the feminine pleasure in turning hell into an ornament. She delighted in trampling on everything social distinction in this world and the next. She knew that the universe was as unintelligible to her on any theory of morals as it was to her worship person. She felt like them. No short conviction that it was any more intelligible to the creator of it. To her every supplement supplant was a universe in itself to be judged apart on his own merits. By his love for her. By no means on his orthodoxy or on his conventional standing in the church. Or according to his correctness in defining the nature of the Trinity. The convulsive whole, which Mary to this day maintains over human imagination. As you could see it **inaudible word** was do much less of her power of saving a solar body than to her sympathy with people who suffered under law. Divine or human. Justly or unjustly. By accident or design. By decree of God or by guilt of devil. She cared not a straw for conventional morality. She had no notion of letting her friends be punish to the 10th generation for the sins of their ancestors or the peccadillos of Eve. Mary filled heaven with the sort of person little to the taste of any respectable middle-class society, which has trouble enough in making this world decent and paying its bills without having to continue the effort in another. Mary stood in the church of her own so independent that the Trinity might've perished without much effecting her position. But on the other hand, the Trinity could look on and see her dethroned with almost a sigh of release.
And this happened in the 13th century. This happened with the rise of powerful monastic orders. Like the Dominicans who seized control of the church again. The church became militant again. And the 13th century closed with Christianity completely different from the century before.
Chartres cathedral in France is the palace of the Virgin Mary. It is the Christian Parthenon to this Athena. Not so much the Goddess of wisdom but the Goddess of love, of compassion. And for Henry Adams writing in the industrial jungle of the late 19th early 20th century, looking to find when was the last time that human beings were balanced. When is the last time that inner aspiration and outer expression were of a kind, of a single piece, unbroken? When is the last time that the little people of the world were at home in the universe? And he had to go all the way back to the 12th century. All the way back to Chartres. And then he remembered that he had seen at Mont Saint Michel, something that was necessary to the understanding of Chartres.
And so, Henry Adams began working on his book Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. Spending seven years traveling constantly. Not only in France but all over the world. Japan, the South seas, wherever he could go. Thinking all the time, turning over in his mind. What was it about the 12th century? What is it about Chartres? What is it about the Virgin Mary that allowed for this spiritual equilibrium? And what upset it? What leads like an avalanche of lies to the 20th century? And they complete devaluation of the spiritual life. This was the tone within which Henry Adams wrote this book. And he began it with this sentence about Saint Michael,
The arc angel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower that crowned his church, wings up spread, sword up lifted, the devil crawling beneath the rooster symbol of eternal vigilance perched on his mailed foot. Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven and on earth, which seems in the 11th century to leave hardly room for the Virgin of the crypt at Chartres. Still less for the **inaudible word** Christ of the 13th century **inaudible word or two**. The arch angel stands for church and state, both militant. He is the conqueror of safety. The mightiest of all created spirits. The nearest to God. His place was where the danger was greatest. Therefore, you find him here. For the same reason he was while the pagan danger lasted, the patroned Saint of France. So, the Normans, when they were converted to Christianity put themselves under his powerful protection.
And he goes on to say, probingly, discoveringly that Michael stood really not for law. Not for some firstly or heavenly order. But for energy. That when you really came to it, it was for energy. It was for this tremendous Elam that will conquer evil. Will restore the world. But in an apocalyptic way. In a final battle, good against evil.
And it is this that he balances against the vision of the quietude of Chartres. Of the incredible capacity for Mary's presence to allow for the gentle inner penetration and merging of all conditions. So that energy is extraneous. It is no longer required. So that the demonical push of law and conquests are irrelevant finally. And this is the way in which Henry Adams developed this.
He starts with Mont Saint Michel. He starts with the pinnacle. And he works his way down through the architecture. And then he cites the building upon its location and notes that the original granite mountain that was there was not leveled at all to make the church easier to architecturally position it. But that the church was built right on top. Which meant then that they had to create ingenious buttressing to hold the church stable on the pinnacle of this mountain. And that they aspiring tower has its origins in this aspiring mountain that is not cut down. So, Mont Saint Michel is the architecture of ingenious power, balance and poise in triumphant expression. It is the sword of Michael raised.
He writes,
Here is your 11th century church. How does it affect you? Serious and simple to excess is it not? Young people rarely enjoy it. They prefer the Gothic even as you see it here looking at us from the choir through the great Norman arch. No doubt they are right since they are young. Both men and women have lived, who have lived long and are tired. Who wants to rest. Who have done with aspiration and ambition. Whose life has been a broken arch. Feel this repose and self-restraint as they feel nothing else. The quiet strength of these curved lines. The solid support of these heavy columns. The moderate proportions. Even the modified lights. The absence of display of effort.
And he goes on to describe that Mont Saint Michel is often referred to in the literature of the time as Mere del pear peril, the ocean of peril. And in fact, he cites again and again, that the literary compliment to Mont Saint Michel is The Song Of Roland, Le Chanson de Roland. Which is a Carolingian Age of Charlemagne. Of the great hero Roland who helps to drive the infidels out of Spain. Saragossa is the central battlefield in The Song Of Roland. And the whole Epic is balanced as an Epic would be upon a central event. And the central event is the death of Oliver. Roland's great companion.
But when it comes to the death of Roland, it is remembered of the origins of his vision. The spot. The location. And it was there where Mont Saint Michel was to be built. And it reads in section 176 of The Song of Roland,
The country Roland lay down beneath a pine. To land to Spain he's turned him as he lies. And many things begins to call to mind. All the broad lands he conquered in his time. And fairest France and the men of his line. And Charles, his Lord, who bred him from a child. He cannot but weep for them inside. Yet of himself he is mindful be times. He beats his breast and in God's mercy cries. His right-hand glove he's tendered under, unto Christ.
The sword hand, empty now.
And from his hand Gabriel excepts the sign. Straightway his head upon his arm declines. With folded hands he makes an end and dies. God sent him his angel **inaudible word** and great think Michael of peril by the tide. Saint Gabriel too was with him at his side. The country's soul lay bare to paradise.

Henry Adams is stewing at himself in his book. What is this glory? What is this energy which the divine seems to command to men to do? And why would it be ineffectual, irrelevant for the women? They do not respond to this. It is not the law for them. It is not the reality for them. And in the thousand years that the masculine mind has tyrannized the world with its designs, all peace, all equanimity has progressively done bred out of the person. Bred out of the society. Bred out of the future possibility. So that to find this repose, he says, we needs go back in time.

And the first rest that we find he's in the 12th century. He writes
For a first visit to Chartres, choose some pleasant morning when the lights are soft. For one wants to be welcome and the cathedral has moods. At times severe. The first glimpse that is caught in the first that was meant to be caught is that of the two spires. With all the education that Normandy and Ille de France can give, one is still ignorant. The spire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture. And needs least study in order to be felt.

And then he goes on to describe how there are in fact two different spires at Chartres. There is one Spire which dates from the original construction. There was a second spire that dates from the 16th century. And they are different. The higher one, the 16th century, has a kind of a pretentiousness to it. It's design has in fact defaced the original design of the cathedral. That in fact, on the West portal there used to be a, an enclave of about 40 feet. A covered porch, as it were, before one came to the massive West portal to enter the cathedral. And Henry Adams said that the original spire was balanced over this. So that the porch where people, pilgrims. And one went to Chartres on a pilgrimage. There was no huge population there. So, people were traveling from all over France, from all over Europe to come there. And they would pray before entering the church. And so, the porch, this cave like protection under the spire was this symbolic welcoming. And that the aspiration was balanced as a protection for the supplants who have come. It was not an expression to impress them, but a folded wing to comfort them, which was different. But when Chartres was rebuilt, as it was several times, and again in the 16th century, the wall was moved up the 40 feet and all of that was lost. So that the original design was unintelligible until persons like Henry Adams rethought the architecture in terms not only of its symbolism, but in terms of its religious meaningfulness.
He writes in here,
First comes the central doorway and above it is the glory of Christ as the church at Chartres understood Christ in the year 1150. For the glories of Christ were many and the Chartres Christ is one. Whatever Christ may have been in other churches, here on this portal he offers himself to his flock as the Herald of salvation alone. Among all the imagery of these three doorways there is no hint of fear.
Or punishment or damnation. There is no hint of it at all. And this is the note of the whole time. And in fact, this is the keynote of the Virgin Mary's palace, the queen of heaven's palace. There is no damnation. There is no fear. There is no punishment. Hell is an ornament, which one can set aside. It's a different spirituality. It's a feminist spirituality.
He writes, "Before 1200 the church seems not to have felt the need of appealing habitually to terror. The promise of hope and happiness was enough. Even the portal at Automn (sp?), which display the last judgment belongs to Saint Lazarus." The proof and symbol of resurrection. But a hundred years later, every church portal showed Christ not as a savior but as a judge. And he presided over a last judgment.
And so, Henry Adams says, this is the beginning of a shift. Of a massive shift in change. That there is such a thing as a church, militant and triumphant over a judgment according to law. Which is distinctly different from a presentation at Chartres through the Virgin Mary of something above law, beyond triumph, beyond despair. He writes, "Perhaps our lady of Chartres was known to be peculiarly gracious and gentle. And this made partially account also for the extreme popularity of her shrine."
And Adams takes great pains to show us from the literature of the time, from the records of the time, that it was the common people who rebuilt Chartres again and again. That it suffered many setbacks. Many fires. And was almost completely destroyed in 1194 by a massive fire. And that this happened at a time when the whole economic basis of Europe shifted from bartering, from goods, to money which was issued. It was a signal that the feudal Lords had taken control of the economics of Europe. Much like the giant international corporations of today. So that it was not goods that they wanted but it wasn't indifferent valuation, which could be controlled from its point of issuing, from its point of valuation, from its point of collection. And who controlled that then as a medium had the hand around the neck.
But Henry Adams notes that Chartres was not rebuilt by huge donations from wealthy feudal Lords. They did not contribute. It was the common people who offered their services, who came by the droves. So much for so long that it was described in literature at the time as the cult of the carts. That the common people by word of mouth sent the message that the Virgin Mary's palace has been destroyed by fire. And he says it was a terrible debacle because underneath in the crypt of the church was a robe, much like the shroud of Turin, but this was the robe of the Virgin Mary. And after the fire with thousands, standing around wailing and moaning, when the crypt was opened, charred timbers pushed aside, collapsed stone rubble pushed aside, they found the garment intact. And it was this miracle that permeated the countryside, the whole country. And France as a geographical location, which was Normandy at that time. Which included England at that time.
How did the common people bring cartloads of stone and wood and they rebuilt the church? He says,
You can see in the grave and gracious face and attitude of the Christ raising his hand to bless you as you enter his kingdom. In the long arrays of figures that line the entrance to greet you as you pass. And in the expression of majesty and mercy of the Virgin herself on her throne, above the Southern doorway. Never once are you regarded as a profitable rebel or trader. Or a stranger to be treated with suspicion. Or a child to be impressed by fear.
He says, "Equally distinct, perhaps even more emphatic is the sculpture's earnestness to make you feel without direct insistence, that you are entering the court of the queen of heaven, who is one with her son and the church."
And he describes how the central doorway has always been called the Royal doorway.
The highest note is struck at once in the central bay over the door where you see the coronation of Mary as Queen of heaven. A favorite subject in art from very early times. The dominant idea of Mary's church, the queen of heaven. You see Mary on the left seated on her throne. On the right seated on a precisely similar thrown is Christ, who holds up his right hand apparently to bless. Since Mary already bears the crown. Mary bends forward with her hands raised toward her son as though in gratitude. Or adoration. Or prayer. But certainly not in an attitude of feudal homage. On either side an arch angel swings a sensor.
This is a very peculiar iconography. She is Queenly in her own right. It is not an office delegated to her after the fact. It is not an office given to her to fit into a scheme. She, in fact, transcends the scheme. This is her miraculous nature. She is a context for the entire sequence of events and is not subject to the sequencing of the events at all. And she is mysterious. Hence, she is not controllable. You cannot fit her in. She is the context of the whole matrix and not a part of it.
He writes, "Unless we feel this assertion of divine right of the Queen of heaven, apart from the Trinity, yet one with it. Chartres is unintelligible. The extreme emphasis laid upon it, at the church door shows what the church means within." And he says, of course, this was not strictly Orthodox.
He says,
Perhaps since we are not members of the church, we might be unnoticed and unreviewed. If we start by suspecting that the worship of the Virgin never was strictly Orthodox. But Chartres was hers before it ever belonged to the church. And like Lords in our own time was a shrine peculiarly favored by her presence. The Bishop, the mere fact that it was a Bishop brick had little share in its sanctity. The Bishop was much more afraid of Mary than he was at any church council ever held.
And then he goes inside the building. And he says, what is it about this building? What is it here, which we may hopefully discover with intelligence and sensitivity? With questioning. And he says, this is so significant for us because it is exactly this quality that is left out of our age. It is exactly this does produce a century of monumental disease like the 20th century.
So, we go into Chartres and he takes great pains to go through the materials. He notes the stone. He knows the tremendous ribbing of mountain quality. The granite. He notes that the stone is reshaped into this uplifting vaulting everywhere. But there was vaulting in other churches. What is it about Chartres? That's the vaulting somewhat intinuated. And that, in fact, what we have is a negative spacing, which becomes more apparent as we get acclimated to the interior Chartres. That is not the stone. It is not the structure that is important in Chartres. That we become sensitive finally to a quality of space. And the spaciousness is made by the pattern perforation of the stone, is the windowing. It is the colossal triumph of the windowing of Chartres. And that what makes the windowing finally apparent and yet invisible, that is to say transparent, is the glass. And he says, it's amazing that the palette, the color scheme, in stained glass of Chartres is very simple. That there's a primordial red. There is a weak and a strong yellow. There's a weak and strong green. A weak and a strong purple. And the foundation for this whole palette is blue. A deep, intense blue. A high moon, high altitude blue. And those are the only colors that there are. And this eight-fold scheme is brought into play to show that the imagery of whatever has happened in the world in man's imagination, in his spiritual memory, are about a sequencing of images. The whole array of which loses its definition when the sun shines. So that there is only this whirl of multicolored lights infusing the presence of the space of the cathedral. And he says, this becomes startling for us. That we finally come into this kind of a quality.
If I can find it here for you.
The Empress mother sits full face on a rich throne and dais with a child on her lap. Repeating her attitude except that her hands support his shoulders. She wears her crown. Her feet rest on a stool. And both stool rug, robe, and throne are as rich as color and decoration can make them. At last a dove appears and the rays of the Holy ghost. Imperial as the Virgin is it is no longer quite the unlimited empire of the Western land set. The **inaudible word** encircles her head only. She holds no scepter. The Holy ghost seems to give her a support, which she did not need before. While Saint Gabriel and Saint Michael, her arch angels, with the symbols of power have disappeared. Exquisite as the angels surround and bare up her throne, they assert no authority. The window itself is not a single composition. The panels below seem inserted merely to fill up the space. Six represent the marriage of Cana. And the three at the bottom show a detest little demon tempting Christ in the desert. But the effect of the whole in this angle, which is almost always dark or filled with shadow, is deep and sad as though the Empress tells of authority fail and she's come down from the western portal to reproach us for our neglect. The face is haunting. Perhaps it's force maybe due to near nearness. For this is the only insurance interest, an instance in glass of her descending so low that we can almost touch her and see what the 12th century instinctively felt in the features, which even in their beatitude were serious and almost sad under the austere responsibilities of infinite pity and power.

And he says that we seem to find ourselves in a strange quality. The presence of a divinity that finally even transcends all of our experience with energy, with form. And that this multi-colored presence finally work it's miracle. And elicits from us that non-response that we had been lacking. A quality which is not to be evoked by out of us, but to be awakened so that we experience it as that central feature of our reality.
He says,
Upon my word you may sit here forever imagining such appeals and the endless discussions and criticisms that were heard every day under these halls, 700 years ago. That the Virgin answered the questions is my firm belief just as it is my conviction that she did not answer them elsewhere. 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 Matarese 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 autumnal tones of the glass. Your ears drowned with the purity of the voices.

You see all of the senses brought into a structured play and yet there's something else. Something else. "One sense reacting upon another until sensation reaches the limit of its range." We become surfeit with our capacities. With what can be elicited. With what can be evoked. And in the surfeit, something happens.
One sense, reacting upon another until sensation reaches the limit of its range. You or any other loss could, if you cared to look and listen, feel a sense beyond the human, ready to reveal a sense of divine that would make that world once more intelligible and bring the Virgin to life again. In all the depth of feeling, which she shows here. In lines, vaults, chapels, colors, legends, chants. More eloquent than the prayer book and more beautiful than the autumn sunlight. And anyone willing to try could feel it like the child reading new thought without end into the art he had studied a hundred times. But when it's still more convincing, he could at will in an instant shatter the whole art by calling into a single motive of his own.

Well, let's take a break and we'll come back.

END OF SIDE ONE

I think you can begin to appreciate from the last week and from the first part of this week, what a complex character Henry Adams was. That the grandson and the great grandson of the Adams presidents was a distinguished member, perhaps the most distinguished member, of that whole family line. But as great an achievement as Mont Saint Michel and Chartres is, it is but one half of a tandem. There were two works that were written together at the same time. And the other work is one that we'll go into next week, which is entitled The Education of Henry Adams. Because he was conscious enough to put himself into the picture. And he dealt with himself in the third person, as few people have ever been able to do. And he said here is my best vision of truth. Here is the life I've been forced to lead. Because of the pressures of history. Because of the exigencies of human life. And that the contrast between the two is almost unbearable.
Henry Adams wrote from himself at the conclusions of his works, a poem which he sent to a niece. A favorite niece of his. And the poem was not published until years after Henry Adams was dead. In a little volume called Letters to a Niece and a Poem. And it is the poem, I'll give you a part of it this week and a part of it next week, which is the bridge between the two books. Between the book Mont Saint Michel and Chartres and the book The Education of Henry Adams. And it's entitled Prayer to The Virgin of Chartres.
Gracious Lady. Simple as when I ask your aid before. Humble is when I prayed for grace in vain. 700 years ago, weak, wary, sore in heart and hope, I ask your help again. You who remember all, remember me. An English scholar of a Norman name. I was a thousand when I crossed the sea to wrangle in the Paris schools for fame. When your Byzantine portal was still young, I prayed there with my master Avelar. When Ave Marias stella was first sung, I helped thing it here with Saint Bernard. When Blash set up your gorgeous rose of France, I stood among the servants of the queen. And when Saint Louis made his **inaudible word**, I followed barefoot where the King had been. For centuries I brought you all my care and vexed you with the murmurs of a child. You heard the tedious burden of my prayers. You could not grant them, but at least you smile. If then I left, you it was not my crime. Or if a crime, it was not mine alone. All children wander with truant time. Pardon me too. You pardoned once your son.
And I'll finish that poem next week. But you begin to get a little of the incredible depth of Henry Adams.
Adams was set up as we have seen last week by many personal quirks, his own personal family history. His own personality. The nature of the United States itself, this mystical land. And all of it came to the focused in the balance between memory and imagination for Henry Adams. So that when he looked at the present in his day of the United States, it didn't fit in between the vision of the future and the reality of the past. It was like some bastard that had no parentage whatsoever.
And so, Adam spent many years as what we would call today, an investigative reporter, to try and find out what is going on? What is happening? And Adams, who was extremely precocious as an individual was not afraid to, to go to the big men, to go to the important spots where history was being made. This is why he lived in Washington DC. And even as a, a youngster first in Europe, in 1860 he was 21 years old when the Italian Revolution under Garibaldi broke out, Henry Adams made a pilgrimage by himself all the way down to Sicily. All the way to Palermo. Braved the, the bombs and the guns and the battles. And won through to an interview with Garibaldi.
And this tenacity, this personal courage, of Henry Adams was brought into play in 1868. When he came back to the United States. He was 30 years old. He had been the assistant to his father who was the, um, American ambassador to England during the civil war. Lincoln had the have someone he could count on to keep England off choosing sides. England would have loved to have come in on the side of the South. Many of the factions of English power were thinking along these lines. And it was Charles Francis Adams, who with his assistant, the young Henry Adams kept England out of the civil war.
But when he came back to the United States, when he was hit in the face by the incredible madness that followed the civil war. The country was insane. The society was completely immoral. Completely disrupted. And Adams took it upon himself to try and find the throat of the terror. Where is the center that of this maelstrom? And he found it. And he wrote it up in an article which caused great consternation at the time. And today, whenever it is read, it causes consternation all over again. The article was called The New York Gold Conspiracy about Jim Fiske. And about machinations of high finance that lead directly to the White House. And Adams published this in 1870 in The Westminster Review, October 1870.
And he begins The New York Gold Conspiracy with this statement,
The civil war in America with its enormous issues of depreciating currency, and it's reckless waste of money and credit by the government created a speculative mania such as the United States with all its experience in this respect had never known before. Not only in Broad Street, the center of New York speculation. But far and wide throughout the Northern States almost every man who had money employed a part of his capital in the purchase of stocks or gold of copper or petroleum or domestic products in the hope of rise in prices. Or a stake money on the expectation of a fall. To use the jargon of the street every farmer and every shopkeeper in the country seemed to be engaged and carrying some favorite security on a margin.
And et cetera, et cetera.
The anomaly that Henry Adams was talking about in 1870 has become the backbone of the United States economy. Today. It's called the stock market. I won't get you all excited and angered by reading the whole thing. It's devastating. Here are a couple of the characters.
Jim Fiske Jr. was still more original and character. He was not yet 40 years of age and had the instincts of 14. He came originally from Vermont. Probably the most respectable and correct state in the union. And his father had been a peddler who sold goods from town to town in his native Valley of the Connecticut. The son followed his father's calling with boldness and success. He drove his huge wagon and made resplendent with paint and varnish with four or six horses through the towns of Vermont and Western Massachusetts. And when his father remonstrated that his reckless management, the young man with his usual bravado, took his father into a service on a fixed salary with a warning that he was not to put on airs. Fiske took over the center of the growth, the railroads. And as the fulcrum for this power grab, he tried to corner the gold market in New York.
And Henry Adams goes on to describe this in The New York Gold Conspiracy. And he concludes near the end with this,
Nevertheless, sooner or later, the last traces of the disturbing influence of war and paper money will disappear in America. As they have sooner or later disappeared in every other country, which has passed through the same evils. The result of this convulsion itself has been in the main good. It indicates the approaching end of a troubled time.
This is 1817.
This year's Gold and Fiske will at last be obliged to yield to the force of moral and economic laws. The Erie railroad will be rescued, and its history will, perhaps rival that of the great speculative manias of the last century. The United States will restore a sound basis to its currency. And we'll learn to deal with the political reforms it requires. Yet though the regular process of development may debee, may be depended upon in its ordinary and established course to purge American society of the worst agents of an exceptionally corrupt time. The history of the Erie Corporation offers one point in regard to which modern society everywhere is directly interested for the first time. Since the creation these enormous corporate bodies, one of them has shown its power for mischief and has proved itself able to override and trample on law, custom, decency and every restraint known to society without scruple. And as yet without check. The belief is common in America that the day is at hand when corporations far greater than the Erie swaying power, such as never in the world's history, been trusted in the hands of private citizens controlled by single men like Vanderbilt. Or by combination of men like Fiske and Gold. After having created a system of quiet but irresistible corruption, will ultimately succeed in directing government itself. Under the American form of society, no authority exists capable of effective resistance.
That was an 1870. Henry Adams lived till 8, 1918. He lived for almost 50 years beyond that. And he saw every nightmare come true. And in the midst of that, in the midst of realizing that this was actually happening, that's when he wrote Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. And that's when he wrote The Education of Henry Adams. Just to give you a little of the perspective.
Well, I have dessert for you. Like in the fairy tale, there has to be happy ending. So, these are a slides of Chartres. And I….
**inaudible comment from the room**
Can you see that alright? I'll try and leave out the comment as much as possible and just let you enjoy. And the wonderful strength.
You can see the scale with the people here. It's a very tall priest here. So even in our time, when our sense of scale is opened up, you can imagine that 900 years ago, this was truly phenomenal. And it makes it all more important to realize what dedication the common people had to have to rebuild it again and again.
This is the crypt underneath.
Another view.
What dominates at first is the tremendous variety of structure. And as Henry Adams shows that what occurred finally is the presence that the structure does not **inaudible word**. And the presence is the character through the structure by light. And it is the **inaudible word or two** path aware in that space who focuses the light. And thus, becomes the realized center of that transcendental experience.
There are the two towers. You can see them quite distinct. The one on the left is the original. And the one on the right is the one from the 16th century. The one of the left is a single movement. The one on the right is a Louis Sullivan, I used to call them birthday cakes. Just put another layer on.
In a field of flowers, a celestial row. And the form in which the light may enter and hit **inaudible word or two**

This is the West portal. Over in the, are they called the architraves? Is that it? Where Christ is there are celestial symbols. The Zodiac and so forth. But where Mary is there are the seven virtues and the phases of angels, the seven angels. There was a different emphasis. The emphasis is upon the integration of qualities. And the emphasis for Christ is on the arrangement and the order of lawfulness. It's a different emphasis totally.

Is it in focus **inaudible word**? Monet would have fun with a slide projector like this. Get all kinds of women.

These figures from Chartres only become amazing when you compare them. And sorry I don't have a comparative slide for you. With sculptures from other Gothic cathedral of the same time and location. The other figures are rather like sketches. They're like cartoons compared to Chartres sculptures. And many of them have since been defaced. The one that still exist today have a quiet reality about them. They are noble from presence rather than from triumph.

As Henry Adams said, the peculiar mystery of Chartres is that in any **inaudible word** that one arrives, at any time in one's live, the virgin is home. She is there.

The buttressing.

And the tremendous harmonies, the symphonies. How great the harmonies. Large **inaudible word or two** that permeate through them.

This is a view out over the church out into the city and to the countryside. And unusual view.

I guess we've got this in on the side.

Upside down

It's sideways. It's an interesting composition.

This is….yeah….**inaudible word or two**. How like a ship, like the hull of a ship.

Well I'd love to try and find a slide that expresses the quality of presence in our time that people 800 years ago would have had at Chartres. And so, the next image is one that I feel expresses both our time and the qualities of mysteriousness that Chartres had for them. Entering Chartres for them was like for us entering a telescope. And incredible veracity of the living universe.

Well I think that's all we can do tonight. Thank you so much for coming.

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