What Is Man?

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


Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the
other schemes aim at and produce the same result--RIGHT LIVING--has
yours an advantage over the others?

O.M. One, yes--a large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions.
When a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as
to the REAL chief motive which impels him to it--in those other cases he
is.

Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for
a mean reason? In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the
IMPRESSION that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an
advantage?

O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking
himself a duke, and living a duke's life and parading in ducal fuss and
feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he would
only examine the herald's records.

Y.M. But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand in
his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand,
and that benefits the community.

O.M. He could do that without being a duke.

Y.M. But would he?

O.M. Don't you see where you are arriving?

Y.M. Where?

O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to
let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride's sake, a pretty
low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made
acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up
his purse and cease to be good?

Y.M. But isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he THINKS
he is doing good for others' sake?

O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes. They think
humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and
handsome conduct.

Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good
deed for his OWN sake first-off, instead of first for the GOOD DEED'S
sake, no man would ever do one.

O.M. Have you committed a benevolence lately?

Y.M. Yes. This morning.

O.M. Give the particulars.

Y.M. The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a
child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned last
night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money to
build another one.

O.M. You furnished it?

Y.M. Certainly.

O.M. You were glad you had the money?

Y.M. Money? I hadn't. I sold my horse.

O.M. You were glad you had the horse?

Y.M. Of course I was; for if I hadn't had the horse I should have been
incapable, and my MOTHER would have captured the chance to set old Sally
up.

O.M. You were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable?

Y.M. Oh, I just was!

O.M. Now, then--

Y.M. Stop where you are! I know your whole catalog of questions, and I
could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask them;
but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did the
charity knowing it was because the act would give ME a splendid pleasure,
and because old Sally's moving gratitude and delight would give ME
another one; and because the reflection that she would be happy now and
out of her trouble would fill ME full of happiness. I did the whole
thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that I was looking
out for MY share of the profits FIRST. Now then, I have confessed. Go
on.

O.M. I haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground.
Can you have been any MORE strongly moved to help Sally out of her
trouble--could you have done the deed any more eagerly--if you had been
under the delusion that you were doing it for HER sake and profit only?

Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved
me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. I played
the limit!

O.M. Very well. You begin to suspect--and I claim to KNOW--that when a
man is a shade MORE STRONGLY MOVED to do ONE of two things or of two
dozen things than he is to do any one of the OTHERS, he will infallibly
do that ONE thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be good, not all
the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the strength of the
impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort and contentment
he will get out of the act.

Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in
men's hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that
good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for the
sake of No. 1?

O.M. That is what I fully believe.

Y.M. Doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed?

O.M. If there is dignity in falsity, it does. It removes that.

Y.M. What is left for the moralists to do?

O.M. Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his
mouth and takes back with the other: Do right FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, and be
happy in knowing that your NEIGHBOR will certainly share in the benefits
resulting.

Y.M. Repeat your Admonition.

O.M. DILIGENTLY TRAIN YOUR IDEALS UPWARD AND STILL UPWARD TOWARD A
SUMMIT WHERE YOU WILL FIND YOUR CHIEFEST PLEASURE IN CONDUCT WHICH, WHILE
CONTENTING YOU, WILL BE SURE TO CONFER BENEFITS UPON YOUR NEIGHBOR AND
THE COMMUNITY.

Y.M. One's EVERY act proceeds from EXTERIOR INFLUENCES, you think?

O.M. Yes.

Y.M. If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the ORIGINATOR of the idea,
but it comes in from the OUTSIDE? I see him handling money--for
instance--and THAT moves me to the crime?

O.M. That, by itself? Oh, certainly not. It is merely the LATEST
outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching
back over a period of years. No SINGLE outside influence can make a man
do a thing which is at war with his training. The most it can do is to
start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of NEW
influences--as in the case of Ignatius Loyola. In time these influences
can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new
character to yield to the FINAL influence and do that thing. I will put
the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, I think. Here
are two ingots of virgin gold. They shall represent a couple of
characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by years
of diligent right training. Suppose you wanted to break down these
strong and well-compacted characters--what influence would you bring to
bear upon the ingots?

Y.M. Work it out yourself. Proceed.

O.M. Suppose I turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long
succession of hours. Will there be a result?

Y.M. None that I know of.

O.M. Why?

Y.M. A steam-jet cannot break down such a substance.

O.M. Very well. The steam is an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, but it is
ineffective because the gold TAKES NO INTEREST IN IT. The ingot remains
as it was. Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a vaporized
condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an
instantaneous result?

Y.M. No.

O.M. The QUICKSILVER is an outside influence which gold (by its peculiar
nature--say TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITION) CANNOT BE INDIFFERENT TO. It stirs
up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive it; but a SINGLE
application of the influence works no damage. Let us continue the
application in a steady stream, and call each minute a year. By the end
of ten or twenty minutes--ten or twenty years--the little ingot is sodden
with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its character is degraded. At
last it is ready to yield to a temptation which it would have taken no
notice of, ten or twenty years ago. We will apply that temptation in the
form of a pressure of my finger. You note the result?

Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not
the SINGLE outside influence that does the work, but only the LAST one of
a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how my
SINGLE impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it, but
only the LAST one of a preparatory series. You might illustrate with a
parable.



A Parable

O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys--twins. They
were alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal
appearance. They were the models of the Sunday-school. At fifteen
George had the opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed
away for the Pacific. Henry remained at home in the village. At eighteen
George was a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the
advanced Bible class. At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits and
drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of the
European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong, and out of
a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sunday-school. At twenty-six
George was a wanderer, a tramp, and Henry was pastor of the village
church. Then George came home, and was Henry's guest. One evening a man
passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with a pathetic
smile, "Without intending me a discomfort, that man is always keeping me
reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of money about him,
and goes by here every evening of his life." That OUTSIDE
INFLUENCE--that remark--was enough for George, but IT was not the one
that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely represented the
eleven years' accumulation of such influences, and gave birth to the act
for which their long gestation had made preparation. It had never
entered the head of Henry to rob the man--his ingot had been subjected to
clean steam only; but George's had been subjected to vaporized
quicksilver.



V

More About the Machine

Note.--When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to
colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she has
answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows that she
has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the millionaire's
privilege of having a standard; since she evidently requires him to adopt
her standard, she is by that act requiring herself to adopt his. The
human being always looks down when he is examining another person's
standard; he never find one that he has to examine by looking up.



The Man-Machine Again

Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine?

Old Man. I do.

Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his
control--carries on thought on its own hook?

O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every
waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to
sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must
obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you tell
it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still
for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it with
subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man's help it would
wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.

Y.M. Maybe it does.

O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, "The moment I wake I
will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail. His mind
will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough awake
to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon
another subject. Make the experiment and see.

Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.

O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will
listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all
persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle
dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes
chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot
keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you.



After an Interval of Days

O.M. Now, dreams--but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try
commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any thinking
on its own hook?

Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should
wake in the morning.

O.M. Did it obey?

Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation,
without waiting for me. Also--as you suggested--at night I appointed a
theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on
that one and no other.

O.M. Did it obey?

Y.M. No.

O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?

Y.M. Ten.

O.M. How many successes did you score?

Y.M. Not one.

O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has
no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject in
spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside
in spite of him. It is entirely independent of him.

Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.

O.M. Do you know chess?

Y.M. I learned it a week ago.

O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night?

Y.M. Don't mention it!

O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the
combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some
sleep?

Y.M. Yes. It wouldn't listen; it played right along. It wore me out
and I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.

O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous
rhyme-jingle?

Y.M. Indeed, yes!

"I saw Esau kissing Kate, And she saw I saw Esau; I saw Esau, he saw
Kate, And she saw--"

And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day
and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it
seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.

O.M. And the new popular song?

Y.M. Oh yes! "In the Swee-eet By and By"; etc. Yes, the new popular
song with the taking melody sings through one's head day and night,
asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind to
let it alone.

O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It
is master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that
it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its
complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no
use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either,
whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could
originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you
could do it.

Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.

O.M. Yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and get
it accepted?

Y.M. No.

O.M. And you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a
dream-thought for itself?

Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream
mind are the same machine?

O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts?
Things that are dream-like?

Y.M. Yes--like Mr. Wells's man who invented a drug that made him
invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.

O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and
unfantastic?

Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like
real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly
differentiated characters--inventions of my mind and yet strangers to me:
a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a
kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old
persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in
character, each preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid
fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are
tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there
are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is
exactly like real life.

O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and
artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably
through--all without help or suggestion from you?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or
suggestion from you--and I think it does. It is argument that it is the
same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the mind
is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic
machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I suggested to you?

Y.M. Which one?

O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over
your mind--if any.

Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you
ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes--one a dull one and barren of
interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot
with it. I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one.

O.M. Did it obey?

Y.M. Well, no, it didn't. It busied itself with the other one.

O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?

Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.

O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think
about?

Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes C
two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty-five cents, and D and A
together owe E and B three-sixteenths of--of--I don't remember the rest,
now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force my
mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to
the other text.

O.M. What was the other text?

Y.M. It is no matter about that.

O.M. But what was it?

Y.M. A photograph.

O.M. Your own?

Y.M. No. It was hers.

O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a second trial?

Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's
report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an
experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the pork
and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident.

O.M. What was the incident?

Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty
spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it.

O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my other
suggestion?

Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to
its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my
help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine,
set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it
could be if it were in some one else's skull. Is that the one?

O.M. Yes.

Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very
lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful
episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my
memory--moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way
carefully along the top of the garden wall. The color of this cat
brought the bygone cat before me, and I saw her walking along the
side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky
fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall down,
helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more
unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation
quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I saw it
all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a
sadder scene--in Terra del Fuego--and with Darwin's eyes I saw a naked
great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling fault;
saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her breast
and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind stop to mourn with that nude
black sister of mine? No--it was far away from that scene in an instant,
and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of
mine. In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my shirt, cringing
and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room throng of finely
dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how I got there. And so on
and so on, picture after picture, incident after incident, a drifting
panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind
without any help from me--why, it would take me two hours to merely name
the multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in fifteen
minutes, let alone describe them to you.

O.M. A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is one
way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.

Y.M. What is that way?

O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes
an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that
matter--or--take your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and
concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It
will take full charge, and furnish the words itself.

Y.M. But don't I tell it what to say?

O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven't time. The words leap
out before you know what is coming.

Y.M. For instance?

O.M. Well, take a "flash of wit"--repartee. Flash is the right word.
It is out instantly. There is no time to arrange the words. There is no
thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic
in its action and needs no help. Where the wit-mechanism is lacking, no
amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product.

Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.



The Thinking-Process

O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine
the things perceived. That is all.

Y.M. The steam-engine?

O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of
invent is discover. I use the word in that sense. Little by little they
discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect
engine. Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the
lid of the teapot. He didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the
fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved
the cylinder--from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. To
attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple
matter--crank and wheel. And so there was a working engine. [1]

One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not
their creating powers--for they hadn't any--and now, after a hundred
years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand
compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner.

Y.M. A Shakespearean play?

O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He
reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp-dances, and so on,
incidents which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization
produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller
borrowed them. And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage.
It is made up of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to
develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the
ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that is all. So does a
rat.

Y.M. How?

O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The
astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the
this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet,
seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble;
infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no
more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud
of his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have
originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit
belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no
monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate
machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in
principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise
than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a PERSONAL
superiority or a personal dignity above the other.

Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he
does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat?

O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of
them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows of
necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself
(personally created) superiorities over his brother.

Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? Would
you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by
collated facts and instances?

O.M. I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker.

Y.M. Very well?

O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is always convertible
by such means.

Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that your
conversion--

O.M. Wait. You misunderstand. I said I have BEEN a Truth-Seeker.

Y.M. Well?

O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you that there are
none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent one is a human
impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly
convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his
days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and make
it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. Hence the
Presbyterian remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the
Spiritualist a Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a
Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and
sincere Seeker after Truth should find it in the proposition that the
moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that
position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the
laws of his construction.