The Soul of Adams

A number of references in Peter Shaw, The Character of John Adams, give us insight into the soul of Adams. Many of these insights are taken from Adams's diary or letters, in which we can see a lot of introspection into his soul.

As a young man, he read an essay by Jonathan Mayhew that Adams's claimed, took possession of his soul. Adamas idolized certain elements of English culture. At the same time, he grew up in a period during whcih there was a “gradual erosion of parental authority.” “A universal drift away from seventeenth-century Puritanism” (11).

As a young man, he tended to Enlightenment religious ideas, God as a creator who has a plan of operation of the universe. He was struck by the Seven Years’ War. He freely discussed universal sufferage, Arianism, Deism, and Atheism (“that all Religion was a cheat, a cunning invention of Priests and Politicians”) (16).

“For the secularized Adams as for the religious Puritan the scrutiny of the self-examiner proved to be more severe than that of any putative future judge” (23).

“Passion remained the hallmark of his spirit. It led him to youthful revolt against his father, his tutors, his best friends’ advice that he become a minister, and the constrictions of a provincial society; later in life it led him to revolution…in the characteristic …of assuming rather than rejecting responsibilities.” (38-39). Throughout, Adams thought that he was called to suppress his passionate spirit (38).

The Puritans, in the mind of Adams, were the inheritors of the Ancient desire for freedom and thirst for knowledge. They had brought that desire with them in laying the foundation for the United States (56).

Two Letters

Consider these two letters:

Adams to Jefferson, January 31, 1796 (259)
“I consider all Reasoning upon French Affairs of little moment. The Fates must determine hereafter as they have done heretofore. Reasoning has been all lost. Passion, Prejudice, Interest, Necessity has governed and will govern; and a Century must roll away before any permanent and quiet System will be established. An Amelioration of human affairs I hope and believe will be the result, but You and I must look down from the Battlements of Heaven if We ever have the Pleasure of Seeing it.

TJ to JA, Sep 4th 1823
"The spirit of the Spaniard and his deadly and eternal hatred to the Frenchman, gives me much confidence that he will never submit, but finally defeat this atrocious violation of the laws of god and man under which he is suffering; and the wisdom and firmness of the Cortes afford reasonable hope that the nation will settle down in a temperate representative government, with an executive properly subordinated to that. Portugal, Italy, Prussia, Germany, Greece will follow suit. You and I shall look down from another world on these glorious achievements to man, which will add to the joys of heaven."

Could Jefferson in 1823 have had in mind Adams's letter from 1796, indicating to Adams that the French Revolution did not slow down the progress of representative government in the way that Adams had predicted in 1796?

John Adams, Lover of Aristocracy

I have re-read my notes on John Adams and the French Revolution. He thinks that there will always be an aristocracy in society, the question is, on what will this Aristocracy be based?

In the Old regime, it was based on land and birth. He thinks that in the United States, it will be based on talent, genius, and merit. He fears that anyone who is blind to the fact of aristocracy will fail to see and check the aristocracy of wealth, or oligarchy. Over time, the wealthy are able to insinuate themselves into and control the political system.

This is why Putin has governed the way he has over the past eight years and why the US is trying to demonize him. Putin has expelled from Russian society or put in jail the oligarchs who were in the process of taking over Russia throughout the 1990s. For this, he is being demonized by the West. He is being demonized by the West, especially because the US is effectively run by the aristocrats of wealth, who control both parties, the media, the music industry, and sports. Any country that opposes this oligarchy is percieved as an enemy.

Finally, Adams was perhaps unwilling to disuss what seems to accompany oligarchs and revolutionaries, the unleashing of the lust for pleasure which results in the lust for power. The children of oligarchs tend to be democrats, which means equal access to all the passions. Democrats become blind to the demagogue, who appeals to the passions as a way of installing himself as a brutal tyrant.

The passions always present themselves as liberators, but when they rule in the soul, they rule with despotic tyranny.