“Good fun.”
+ Booklist 16:304 Je ’20
Reviewed by R. M. Weaver
Bookm 51:454 Je ’20 50w
ADAMS, HENRY. Degradation of the democratic dogma. *$2.50 (3½c) Macmillan 901
19–18407
Brooks Adams has edited some of the literary remains of his brother Henry and published them with a long introductory essay on The heritage of Henry Adams. In introducing the work he writes: “I want to make it clear, once for all, that I am not proposing to write anything approaching to a memoir of my brother.... Nor do I suggest any criticism of his essays which are annexed.... I am seeking to tell the story of a movement in thought which has, for the last century, been developing in my family, and which closes with the ‘Essay on phase,’ which ends this volume.” The essay in which this purpose is embodied is devoted to the principle of democracy which John Quincy Adams upheld and which in the estimation of himself and his descendants received its death blow with the triumph of Jackson. The writings of Henry Adams included in the volume are: The tendency of history (1894); A letter to American teachers of history (1910); and The rule of phase applied to history (1909).
“The title seems ill suited to the papers that make the substance of the volume. The degradation of the democratic dogma which is here in question is thus far from being a general movement of thought; it is a movement within the Adams family, exemplified chiefly in Brooks and Henry.” Carl Becker