WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)
CONTENTS
What Is Man?
The Death of Jean
The Turning-Point of My Life
How to Make History Dates Stick
The Memorable Assassination
A Scrap of Curious History
Switzerland, the Cradle of Liberty
At the Shrine of St. Wagner
William Dean Howells
English as She is Taught
A Simplified Alphabet
As Concerns Interpreting the Deity
Concerning Tobacco
Taming the Bicycle
Is Shakespeare Dead?
------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT IS MAN?
I
a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit
[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old
Man had asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and
nothing more. The Young Man objected, and asked him to go into
particulars and furnish his reasons for his position.]
Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?
Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.
O.M. Where are these found?
Y.M. In the rocks.
O.M. In a pure state?
Y.M. No--in ores.
O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?
Y.M. No--it is the patient work of countless ages.
O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?
Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.
O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that?
Y.M. No--substantially nothing.
O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you
proceed?
Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the
iron ore; crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of
it through the Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and
treat and combine several metals of which brass is made.
O.M. Then?
Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.
O.M. You would require much of this one?
Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.
O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches,
polishers, in a word all the cunning machines of a great factory?
Y.M. It could.
O.M. What could the stone engine do?
Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly--nothing more,
perhaps.
O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously
praise it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. But not the stone one?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above
those of the stone one?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Personal merits?
Y.M. PERSONAL merits? How do you mean?
O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its
own performance?
Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.
O.M. Why not?
Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the
result of the law of construction. It is not a MERIT that it
does the things which it is set to do--it can't HELP doing them.
O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine
that it does so little?
Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the
law of its make permits and compels it to do. There is nothing
PERSONAL about it; it cannot choose. In this process of "working
up to the matter" is it your idea to work up to the proposition
that man and a machine are about the same thing, and that there
is no personal merit in the performance of either?
O.M. Yes--but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense.
What makes the grand difference between the stone engine and the
steel one? Shall we call it training, education? Shall we call
the stone engine a savage and the steel one a civilized man? The
original rock contained the stuff of which the steel one was
built--but along with a lot of sulphur and stone and other
obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old geologic
ages--prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which nothing
within the rock itself had either POWER to remove or any DESIRE
to remove. Will you take note of that phrase?
Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; "Prejudices which
nothing within the rock itself had either power to remove or any
desire to remove." Go on.
O.M. Prejudices must be removed by OUTSIDE INFLUENCES or
not at all. Put that down.
Y.M. Very well; "Must be removed by outside influences or
not at all." Go on.
O.M. The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the
cumbering rock. To make it more exact, the iron's absolute
INDIFFERENCE as to whether the rock be removed or not. Then
comes the OUTSIDE INFLUENCE and grinds the rock to powder and
sets the ore free. The IRON in the ore is still captive. An
OUTSIDE INFLUENCE smelts it free of the clogging ore. The iron
is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further progress.
An OUTSIDE INFLUENCE beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace and
refines it into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now
--its training is complete. And it has reached its limit. By no
possible process can it be educated into GOLD. Will you set that
down?
Y.M. Yes. "Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be
educated into gold."
O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and
leaden mean, and steel men, and so on--and each has the
limitations of his nature, his heredities, his training, and his
environment. You can build engines out of each of these metals,
and they will all perform, but you must not require the weak ones
to do equal work with the strong ones. In each case, to get the
best results, you must free the metal from its obstructing
prejudicial ones by education--smelting, refining, and so forth.
Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?
O.M. Yes. Man the machine--man the impersonal engine.
Whatsoever a man is, is due to his MAKE, and to the INFLUENCES
brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his
associations. He is moved, directed, COMMANDED, by EXTERIOR
influences--SOLELY. He ORIGINATES nothing, not even a thought.
Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which
you are talking is all foolishness?
O.M. It is a quite natural opinion--indeed an inevitable
opinion--but YOU did not create the materials out of which it is
formed. They are odds and ends of thoughts, impressions,
feelings, gathered unconsciously from a thousand books, a
thousand conversations, and from streams of thought and feeling
which have flowed down into your heart and brain out of the
hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. PERSONALLY you did
not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the
materials out of which your opinion is made; and personally you
cannot claim even the slender merit of PUTTING THE BORROWED
MATERIALS TOGETHER. That was done AUTOMATICALLY--by your mental
machinery, in strict accordance with the law of that machinery's
construction. And you not only did not make that machinery
yourself, but you have NOT EVEN ANY COMMAND OVER IT.
Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no
opinion but that one?
O.M. Spontaneously? No. And YOU DID NOT FORM THAT ONE;
your machinery did it for you--automatically and instantly,
without reflection or the need of it.
Y.M. Suppose I had reflected? How then?
O.M. Suppose you try?
Y.M. (AFTER A QUARTER OF AN HOUR.) I have reflected.
O.M. You mean you have tried to change your opinion--as an
experiment?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. With success?
Y.M. No. It remains the same; it is impossible to change
it.
O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is
merely a machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it
has no command over itself--it is worked SOLELY FROM THE OUTSIDE.
That is the law of its make; it is the law of all machines.
Y.M. Can't I EVER change one of these automatic opinions?
O.M. No. You can't yourself, but EXTERIOR INFLUENCES can
do it.
Y.M. And exterior ones ONLY?
O.M. Yes--exterior ones only.
Y.M. That position is untenable--I may say ludicrously
untenable.
O.M. What makes you think so?
Y.M. I merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve
to enter upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with
the deliberate purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I
succeed. THAT is not the work of an exterior impulse, the whole
of it is mine and personal; for I originated the project.
O.M. Not a shred of it. IT GREW OUT OF THIS TALK WITH ME.
But for that it would not have occurred to you. No man ever
originates anything. All his thoughts, all his impulses, come
FROM THE OUTSIDE.
Y....
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