Towards the end of his life Henry Adams bundled up his education and set off in search of a "historical formula that should satisfy the conditions of the stellar universe (Samuels, 1973, 376)", a theory that might bridge the laws of nature and the actions of humanity. "[T]he details of science meant nothing: he wanted to know its mass. ... Kinetic atoms led only to motion; never to direction or progress. History had no use for multiplicity (Ibid., 377)." "Everything must be made to move together (Ibid., 378)." Thus began his quest for some scientific unity which might be applied to human history.

        Recalling the early years of Darwinism, Adams claimed to have been "a predestined follower of the tide (Samuels, 1973, 224)", not because he had any faith in its doctrine, rather because "the current of his time was to be his current, lead where it might (Ibid., 232)." For his generation "[l]aw should be Evolution from lower to higher, aggregation of the atom in a mass, concentration of multiplicity to unity, compulsion of anarchy in order (Ibid., 232)." Though he bemoaned the scant evidence supporting the theory, "Natural Selection led back to Natural Evolution, and at last to Natural Uniformity. ... Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions (Ibid., 225)." This might be the rope with which Adams could bind history.

        However attractive, such a theory lacked much in objective substantiation. In fact, as Adams dwelt upon the matter the theory's improbability increased. The Terebratula displayed "altogether too much uniformity and too little selection (Samuels, 1973, 228)"; whereas the Pteraspis marked a sharp break. "Behind the horizon lay only the Cambrian, without vertabrates or any other organism except a few shell-fish (Ibid., 229)." "When the vertebrates vanished in Siluria, [they] disappeared instantly and forever (Samuels, 1973, 230)."

        Nor was the evidence any stronger for human evolution as Adams returned to Washington in 1869.

"Grant fretted and irritated him ... as a defiance of first principles. He had no right to exist. He should have been extinct for ages. ... That two thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be called--and should actually and truly be--the highest product of the most advanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous (Samuels, 1973, 266)."

        Still dissatisfied and in search of his historical formula that would bring unity to history, Adams drove deeper into the realms of science, where he happened upon force, power, and acceleration. Perhaps these abstractions had done better by evolution than had Terebratula, Pteraspis, or U. S. Grant. So Adams removed himself to the 1893 Exposition in Chicago and the 1900 Exposition in Paris to find the cultural and historical manifestations of these abstract quantities. And find them he did--the Virgin and the Dynamo.

        The Virgin's reproductive force had exercised "vastly more attraction over the human mind than all the steam-engines and dynamos ever dreamed of (Samuels, 1973, 385)." This, "the highest energy ever known to man (Ibid., 385)" had been responsible for the creation of "four-fifths of his noblest art (Ibid., 385)."

"Symbol or energy, the Virgin had acted as the greatest force the Western world ever felt, and had drawn man's activities to herself more strongly than any other power, natural or supernatural, had ever done (Samuels, 1973, 388)."

"And by action on man all known force may be measured (Samuels, 1973, 388)." Within the context of modern industrial society Adams

"began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. ... [O]ne began to pray to it; ... the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force (Samuels, 1973, 380)."

And new, supersensual rays (Langley's infrared spectrum and the Curies' radioactivity) had just inaugurated a futuristic era of forces.

        At last Adams was prepared to formulate a "dynamic theory of history". First he defined "Progress as the development and economy of Forces; ... force as anything that does, or helps to do work (Samuels, 1973, 474)." His theory depicted early man's use of occult force with the invention of the science called Religion for its control (Ibid., 476). As time progressed the Roman Empire, "which had established unity on earth, could not help establishing unity in heaven. It was induced ... to economize the gods (Ibid., 478)." Between the Pyramids and the Cross no new forces affected Western progress until the discovery of the compass and gun powder. "After 1500, the speed of progress so rapidly surpassed man's gait as to alarm everyone, as though is were the acceleration of a falling body (Ibid., 484)" ending

"in 1900 with the appearance of the new class of supersensual forces, before which the man of science stood at first as bewildered and helpless as ... a priest of Isis before the Cross of Christ (Samuels, 1973, 486-487)."

        The student of history "found himself obliged to waste a pencil and several sheets of paper trying to calculate exactly when ... the ocean steamer would reach its limits (Samuels, 1973, 341, but figures appear on p. 490)." But all he could safely conclude was that

"[t]he movement from unity to multiplicity, between 1200 and 1900, was unbroken in sequence, and rapid in acceleration. Prolonged one generation longer, it would require a new social mind. ... [Thought] must enter a new phase subject to new laws. Thus far, since five or ten thousand years, the mind had successfully reacted, and nothing yet proved that it would fail to react--but it would need to jump (Samuels, 1973, 498)."

        Any comments on this article will be welcomed and should be mailed to the author at Aichi Gakuin University, General Education Division, 12 Araike, Iwasaki-cho, Nisshin, Japan 470-0195 or e-mailed to him. Other papers and works in progress may be accessed at http:// www3.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp/ ~jeffreyb/ research/ index.html .