What Is Man?

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> What Is Man?


The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn't know
how to spell, and can't be taught. In this it is like all other
alphabets except one--the phonographic. This is the only competent
alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in
our language.

That admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired alphabet,
can be learned in an hour or two. In a week the student can learn to
write it with some little facility, and to read it with considerable
ease. I know, for I saw it tried in a public school in Nevada forty-five
years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that it has remained in
my memory ever since.

I wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed)
character. I mean SIMPLY the alphabet; simply the consonants and the
vowels--I don't mean any REDUCTIONS or abbreviations of them, such as the
shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and speed. No, I would
SPELL EVERY WORD OUT.

I will insert the alphabet here as I find it in Burnz's PHONIC SHORTHAND.
[Figure 1] It is arranged on the basis of Isaac Pitman's PHONOGRAPHY.
Isaac Pitman was the originator and father of scientific phonography. It
is used throughout the globe. It was a memorable invention. He made it
public seventy-three years ago. The firm of Isaac Pitman & Sons, New
York, still exists, and they continue the master's work.

What should we gain?

First of all, we could spell DEFINITELY--and correctly--any word you
please, just by the SOUND of it. We can't do that with our present
alphabet. For instance, take a simple, every-day word PHTHISIS. If we
tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it TYSIS, and be
laughed at by every educated person.

Secondly, we should gain in REDUCTION OF LABOR in writing.

Simplified Spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several
hundred words, but the new spelling must be LEARNED. You can't spell
them by the sound; you must get them out of the book.

But even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language,
the phonographic alphabet would still beat the Simplified Speller "hands
down" in the important matter of economy of labor. I will illustrate:

PRESENT FORM: through, laugh, highland.

SIMPLIFIED FORM: thru, laff, hyland.

PHONOGRAPHIC FORM: [Figure 2]

To write the word "through," the pen has to make twenty-one strokes.

To write the word "thru," then pen has to make twelve strokes--a good
saving.

To write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to
make only THREE strokes.

To write the word "laugh," the pen has to make FOURTEEN strokes.

To write "laff," the pen has to make the SAME NUMBER of strokes--no labor
is saved to the penman.

To write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to
make only THREE strokes.

To write the word "highland," the pen has to make twenty-two strokes.

To write "hyland," the pen has to make eighteen strokes.

To write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make
only FIVE strokes. [Figure 3]

To write the words "phonographic alphabet," the pen has to make
fifty-three strokes.

To write "fonografic alfabet," the pen has to make fifty strokes. To the
penman, the saving in labor is insignificant.

To write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the pen
has to make only SEVENTEEN strokes.

Without the vowels, only THIRTEEN strokes. [Figure 4] The vowels are
hardly necessary, this time.

We make five pen-strokes in writing an m. Thus: [Figure 5] a stroke
down; a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final
stroke down. Total, five. The phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m
with a single stroke--a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home
drunk and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody
that goes along will see him and say, Alas!

When our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located, it
has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another
pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. But never
mind about the connecting strokes--let them go. Without counting them,
the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty pen-strokes
for their construction--about three pen-strokes per letter.

It is THREE TIMES THE NUMBER required by the phonographic alphabet. It
requires but ONE stroke for each letter.

My writing-gait is--well, I don't know what it is, but I will time myself
and see. Result: it is twenty-four words per minute. I don't mean
composing; I mean COPYING. There isn't any definite composing-gait.

Very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour--say 1,500. If I
could use the phonographic character with facility I could do the 1,500
in twenty minutes. I could do nine hours' copying in three hours; I
could do three years' copying in one year. Also, if I had a typewriting
machine with the phonographic alphabet on it--oh, the miracles I could
do!

I am not pretending to write that character well. I have never had a
lesson, and I am copying the letters from the book. But I can accomplish
my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a good and clear
idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could discard our present
alphabet and put this better one in its place--using it in books,
newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen.

[Figure 6]--MAN DOG HORSE. I think it is graceful and would look comely
in print. And consider--once more, I beg--what a labor-saver it is! Ten
pen-strokes with the one system to convey those three words above, and
thirty-three by the other! [Figure 6] I mean, in SOME ways, not in all.
I suppose I might go so far as to say in most ways, and be within the
facts, but never mind; let it go at SOME. One of the ways in which it
exercises this birthright is--as I think--continuing to use our laughable
alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a rational one at
hand, to be had for the taking.

It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer's rotten
spelling--if I may be allowed to use to frank a term as that--and it will
take five hundred years more to get our exasperating new Simplified
Corruptions accepted and running smoothly. And we sha'n't be any better
off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have the
privilege the Simplifiers are exercising now: ANYBODY can change the
spelling that wants to.

BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE PHONOGRAPHIC SPELLING; THERE ISN'T ANY WAY. It
will always follow the SOUND. If you want to change the spelling, you
have to change the sound first.

Mind, I myself am a Simplified Speller; I belong to that unhappy guild
that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old alphabet
by reducing his whiskey. Well, it will improve him. When they get
through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will be
only HALF drunk. Above that condition their system can never lift him.
There is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but to take
away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with Pitman's wholesome
and undiseased alphabet.

One great drawback to Simplified Spelling is, that in print a simplified
word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a whole squadron
of the Simplified together the spectacle is very nearly unendurable.

The da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled to
the bezair asspekt of the Simplified Kombynashuns, but--if I may be
allowed the expression--is it worth the wasted time? [Figure 7]

To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed
offends the eye, and also takes the EXPRESSION out of the words.

La on, Makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf!

It doesn't thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have sucked
the thrill all out of it.

But a written character with which we are NOT ACQUAINTED does not offend
us--Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and the others--they have an
interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is true of
hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about
the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. The mystery
hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can't come across a
printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we
could read it.

Very well, what I am offering for acceptance and adopting is not
shorthand, but longhand, written with the SHORTHAND ALPHABET UNREACHED.
You can write three times as many words in a minute with it as you can
write with our alphabet. And so, in a way, it IS properly a shorthand.
It has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting look. I will
write something in it, in my rude and untaught way: [Figure 8]

Even when _I_ do it it comes out prettier than it does in Simplified
Spelling. Yes, and in the Simplified it costs one hundred and
twenty-three pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it
costs only twenty-nine.

[Figure 9] is probably [Figure 10].

Let us hope so, anyway.

AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY

I

This line of hieroglyphics was for fourteen years the despair of all the
scholars who labored over the mysteries of the Rosetta stone: [Figure 1]

After five years of study Champollion translated it thus:

Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all the temples,
this upon pain of death.

That was the twenty-forth translation that had been furnished by
scholars. For a time it stood. But only for a time. Then doubts began
to assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors.
Three years of patient work produced eleven new translations; among them,
this, by Gr:unfeldt, was received with considerable favor:

The horse of Epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this
upon pain of death.

But the following rendering, by Gospodin, was received by the learned
world with yet greater favor:

The priest shall explain the wisdom of Epiphanes to all these people,
and these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of death.

Seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely varying
renderings were scored--none of them quite convincing. But now, at last,
came Rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation
which was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct
version, and his name became famous in a day. So famous, indeed, that
even the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the
achievement itself make that not even the noise of the monumental
political event of that same year--the flight from Elba--was able to
smother it to silence. Rawlinson's version reads as follows:

Therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of Epiphanes, but turn and
follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple's peace, and soften for
thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death.

Here is another difficult text: [Figure 2]

It is demotic--a style of Egyptian writing and a phase of the language
which has perished from the knowledge of all men twenty-five hundred
years before the Christian era.

Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon our
crags and boulders. It has taken our most gifted and painstaking
students two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures;
yet there are still two little lines of hieroglyphics among the figures
grouped upon the Dighton Rocks which they have not succeeds in
interpreting to their satisfaction. These: [Figure 3]

The suggested solutions are practically innumerable; they would fill a
book.

Thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only
when we set out to discover the secret of God that our difficulties
disappear. It was always so. In antique Roman times it was the custom
of the Deity to try to conceal His intentions in the entrails of birds,
and this was patiently and hopefully continued century after century,
although the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded
instance. The augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child can
read coarse print. Roman history is full of the marvels of
interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. These strange
and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our admiration. Those
men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery instantly. If the
Rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it would have defeated them, but
entrails had no embarrassments for them. Entrails have gone out,
now--entrails and dreams. It was at last found out that as hiding-places
for the divine intentions they were inadequate.

A part of the wall of Valletri in former times been struck with thunder,
the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town would
some time or other arrive at supreme power. --BOHN'S SUETONIUS, p. 138.

"Some time or other." It looks indefinite, but no matter, it happened,
all the same; one needed only to wait, and be patient, and keep watch,
then he would find out that the thunder-stroke had Caesar Augustus in
mind, and had come to give notice.

There were other advance-advertisements. One of them appeared just
before Caesar Augustus was born, and was most poetic and touching and
romantic in its feelings and aspects. It was a dream. It was dreamed by
Caesar Augustus's mother, and interpreted at the usual rates:

Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to the
stars and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and
earth.--SUETONIUS, p. 139.

That was in the augur's line, and furnished him no difficulties, but it
would have taken Rawlinson and Champollion fourteen years to make sure of
what it meant, because they would have been surprised and dizzy. It
would have been too late to be valuable, then, and the bill for service
would have been barred by the statute of limitation.

In those old Roman days a gentleman's education was not complete until he
had taken a theological course at the seminary and learned how to
translate entrails. Caesar Augustus's education received this final
polish. All through his life, whenever he had poultry on the menu he
saved the interiors and kept himself informed of the Deity's plans by
exercising upon those interiors the arts of augury.

In his first consulship, while he was observing the auguries, twelve
vultures presented themselves, as they had done to Romulus. And when he
offered sacrifice, the livers of all the victims were folded inward in
the lower part; a circumstance which was regarded by those present who
had skill in things of that nature, as an indubitable prognostic of great
and wonderful fortune.--SUETONIUS, p. 141.

"Indubitable" is a strong word, but no doubt it was justified, if the
livers were really turned that way. In those days chicken livers were
strangely and delicately sensitive to coming events, no matter how far
off they might be; and they could never keep still, but would curl and
squirm like that, particularly when vultures came and showed interest in
that approaching great event and in breakfast.

II

We may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years, which brings us
down to enlightened Christian times and the troubled days of King Stephen
of England. The augur has had his day and has been long ago forgotten;
the priest had fallen heir to his trade.

King Henry is dead; Stephen, that bold and outrageous person, comes
flying over from Normandy to steal the throne from Henry's daughter. He
accomplished his crime, and Henry of Huntington, a priest of high degree,
mourns over it in his Chronicle. The Archbishop of Canterbury
consecrated Stephen: "wherefore the Lord visited the Archbishop with the
same judgment which he had inflicted upon him who struck Jeremiah the
great priest: he died with a year."

Stephen's was the greater offense, but Stephen could wait; not so the
Archbishop, apparently.

The kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine
spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress, horror, and woe rose
in every quarter.

That was the result of Stephen's crime. These unspeakable conditions
continued during nineteen years. Then Stephen died as comfortably as any
man ever did, and was honorably buried. It makes one pity the poor
Archbishop, and with that he, too, could have been let off as leniently.
How did Henry of Huntington know that the Archbishop was sent to his
grave by judgment of God for consecrating Stephen? He does not explain.
Neither does he explain why Stephen was awarded a pleasanter death than
he was entitled to, while the aged King Henry, his predecessor, who had
ruled England thirty-five years to the people's strongly worded
satisfaction, was condemned to close his life in circumstances most
distinctly unpleasant, inconvenient, and disagreeable. His was probably
the most uninspiring funeral that is set down in history. There is not a
detail about it that is attractive. It seems to have been just the
funeral for Stephen, and even at this far-distant day it is matter of
just regret that by an indiscretion the wrong man got it.

Whenever God punishes a man, Henry of Huntington knows why it was done,
and tells us; and his pen is eloquent with admiration; but when a man has
earned punishment, and escapes, he does not explain. He is evidently
puzzled, but he does not say anything. I think it is often apparent that
he is pained by these discrepancies, but loyally tries his best not to
show it. When he cannot praise, he delivers himself of a silence so
marked that a suspicious person could mistake it for suppressed
criticism. However, he has plenty of opportunities to feel contented
with the way things go--his book is full of them.

King David of Scotland . . . under color of religion caused his
followers to deal most barbarously with the English. They ripped open
women, tossed children on the points of spears, butchered priests at the
altars, and, cutting off the heads from the images on crucifixes, placed
them on the bodies of the slain, while in exchange they fixed on the
crucifixes the heads of their victims. Wherever the Scots came, there
was the same scene of horror and cruelty: women shrieking, old men
lamenting, amid the groans of the dying and the despair of the living.

But the English got the victory.

Then the chief of the men of Lothian fell, pierced by an arrow, and all
his followers were put to flight. For the Almighty was offended at them
and their strength was rent like a cobweb.

Offended at them for what? For committing those fearful butcheries?
No, for that was the common custom on both sides, and not open to
criticism. Then was it for doing the butcheries "under cover of
religion"? No, that was not it; religious feeling was often expressed in
that fervent way all through those old centuries. The truth is, He was
not offended at "them" at all; He was only offended at their king, who
had been false to an oath. Then why did not He put the punishment upon
the king instead of upon "them"? It is a difficult question. One can
see by the Chronicle that the "judgments" fell rather customarily upon
the wrong person, but Henry of Huntington does not explain why. Here is
one that went true; the chronicler's satisfaction in it is not hidden:

In the month of August, Providence displayed its justice in a remarkable
manner; for two of the nobles who had converted monasteries into
fortifications, expelling the monks, their sin being the same, met with a
similar punishment. Robert Marmion was one, Godfrey de Mandeville the
other. Robert Marmion, issuing forth against the enemy, was slain under
the walls of the monastery, being the only one who fell, though he was
surrounded by his troops. Dying excommunicated, he became subject to
death everlasting. In like manner Earl Godfrey was singled out among his
followers, and shot with an arrow by a common foot-soldier. He made light
of the wound, but he died of it in a few days, under excommunication.
See here the like judgment of God, memorable through all ages!

The exaltation jars upon me; not because of the death of the men, for
they deserved that, but because it is death eternal, in white-hot fire
and flame. It makes my flesh crawl. I have not known more than three
men, or perhaps four, in my whole lifetime, whom I would rejoice to see
writhing in those fires for even a year, let alone forever. I believe I
would relent before the year was up, and get them out if I could. I
think that in the long run, if a man's wife and babies, who had not
harmed me, should come crying and pleading, I couldn't stand it; I know I
should forgive him and let him go, even if he had violated a monastery.
Henry of Huntington has been watching Godfrey and Marmion for nearly
seven hundred and fifty years, now, but I couldn't do it, I know I
couldn't. I am soft and gentle in my nature, and I should have forgiven
them seventy-and-seven times, long ago. And I think God has; but this is
only an opinion, and not authoritative, like Henry of Huntington's
interpretations. I could learn to interpret, but I have never tried; I
get so little time.

All through his book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions
of God, and with the reasons for his intentions. Sometimes--very often,
in fact--the act follows the intention after such a wide interval of time
that one wonders how Henry could fit one act out of a hundred to one
intention out of a hundred and get the thing right every time when there
was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. Sometimes a man
offends the Deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years
later; meantime he was committed a million other crimes: no matter, Henry
can pick out the one that brought the worms. Worms were generally used in
those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people. This has gone
out, now, but in old times it was a favorite. It always indicated a case
of "wrath." For instance:

. . . the just God avenging Robert Fitzhilderbrand's perfidy, a worm
grew in his vitals, which gradually gnawing its way through his
intestines fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating
sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting
punishment brought to his end. --(P. 400.)

It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it was a
particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. Some authorities think
it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt.

However, one thing we do know; and that is that that worm had been due
years and years. Robert F. had violated a monastery once; he had
committed unprintable crimes since, and they had been permitted--under
disapproval--but the ravishment of the monastery had not been forgotten
nor forgiven, and the worm came at last.

Why were these reforms put off in this strange way? What was to be
gained by it? Did Henry of Huntington really know his facts, or was he
only guessing? Sometimes I am half persuaded that he is only a guesser,
and not a good one. The divine wisdom must surely be of the better
quality than he makes it out to be.

Five hundred years before Henry's time some forecasts of the Lord's
purposes were furnished by a pope, who perceived, by certain perfectly
trustworthy signs furnished by the Deity for the information of His
familiars, that the end of the world was

. . . about to come. But as this end of the world draws near many
things are at hand which have not before happened, as changes in the air,
terrible signs in the heavens, tempests out of the common order of the
seasons, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places; all
which will not happen in our days, but after our days all will come to
pass.

Still, the end was so near that these signs were "sent before that we
may be careful for our souls and be found prepared to meet the impending
judgment."

That was thirteen hundred years ago. This is really no improvement on
the work of the Roman augurs.





CONCERNING TOBACCO

As concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. And the chiefest is
this--that there is a STANDARD governing the matter, whereas there is
nothing of the kind. Each man's own preference is the only standard for
him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command
him. A congress of all the tobacco-lovers in the world could not elect a
standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would even much
influence us.

The next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. He hasn't.
He thinks he has, but he hasn't. He thinks he can tell what he regards
as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one--but he can't. He goes
by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. One may palm off the
worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears his brand he will smoke it
contentedly and never suspect.

Children of twenty-five, who have seven years experience, try to tell me
what is a good cigar and what isn't. Me, who never learned to smoke, but
always smoked; me, who came into the world asking for a light.