What Is Man?

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


Y.M. After so--

O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but
one moving impulse--the contenting of his own spirit--and is merely a
machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is not
humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days will be
spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my priceless
possession and in looking the other way when an imploring argument or a
damaging fact approaches.

----- 1. The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a
century earlier.



VI

Instinct and Thought

Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a
while ago--concerning the rat and all that--strip Man bare of all his
dignities, grandeurs, sublimities.

Old Man. He hasn't any to strip--they are shams, stolen clothes. He
claims credits which belong solely to his Maker.

Y.M. But you have no right to put him on a level with a rat.

O.M. I don't--morally. That would not be fair to the rat. The rat is
well above him, there.

Y.M. Are you joking?

O.M. No, I am not.

Y.M. Then what do you mean?

O.M. That comes under the head of the Moral Sense. It is a large
question. Let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it
up.

Y.M. Very well. You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the
rat on A level. What is it? The intellectual?

O.M. In form--not a degree.

Y.M. Explain.

O.M. I think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the same
machine, but of unequal capacities--like yours and Edison's; like the
African pygmy's and Homer's; like the Bushman's and Bismarck's.

Y.M. How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no
mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason?

O.M. What is instinct?

Y.M. It is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited habit.

O.M. What originated the habit?

Y.M. The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it.

O.M. How did the first one come to start it?

Y.M. I don't know; but it didn't THINK it out.

O.M. How do you know it didn't?

Y.M. Well--I have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway.

O.M. I don't believe you have. What is thought?

Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting
together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference
from them.

O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that
it is merely PETRIFIED THOUGHT; solidified and made inanimate by habit;
thought which was once alive and awake, but it become unconscious--walks
in its sleep, so to speak.

Y.M. Illustrate it.

O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all
turned in one direction. They do that instinctively; they gain nothing
by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. It is
an inherited habit which was originally thought--that is to say,
observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from that
observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox noticed
that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time to
escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose to the
wind. That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man's
thought-machine works just like the other animals', but it is a better
one and more Edisonian. Man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason
wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both
front and rear.

Y.M. Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless?

O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a
rule it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin
in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits
which can hardly claim a thought-origin.

Y.M. Give an instance.

O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg
first--never the other one. There is no advantage in that, and no sense
in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set
purpose, I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt,
and will continue to be transmitted.

Y.M. Can you prove that the habit exists?

O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a
clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will
see.

Y.M. The cow illustration is not--

O.M. Sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just the
same as a man's and its reasoning processes the same? I will illustrate
further. If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused to fly
open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt for
it and find it. Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to get
into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take the
corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had
heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed.
These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer
the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the
gate. Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and
went in. Nobody taught him that; he had observed--then thought it out
for himself. His process did not differ from Edison's; he put this and
that together and drew an inference--and the peg, too; but I made him
sweat for it.

Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is
not very elaborate. Enlarge.

O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities. He
comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host
has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a
house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire.
Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The
scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated.
This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was
fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept
on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was away on a
journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant. Its
friends had removed to a village three miles distant. Several months
later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him
home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily
guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory
and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them Edisonially.

Y.M. Yet it was not an Edison and couldn't be developed into one.

O.M. Perhaps not. Could you?

Y.M. That is neither here nor there. Go on.

O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and
next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise
thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address. Here is a case of a
bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a bird
flying around about his dog's head, down in the grounds, and uttering
cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had a young
bird in his mouth--unhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush
and brought the dog away. Early the next morning the mother bird came
for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers
persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds--flying a
little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on;
and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way
across lots. The distance covered was four hundred yards. The same dog
was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had to
give it up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the
stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would do it again; she
knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with confidence. Her
mental processes were what Edison's would have been. She put this and
that together--and that is all that thought IS--and out of them built her
logical arrangement of inferences. Edison couldn't have done it any
better himself.

Y.M. Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think?

O.M. Yes--the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the
macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell
into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was
raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with
the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things
through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this
and that together and draw an inference--the process of thinking. Could
you teach an idiot of manuals of arms, and to advance, retreat, and go
through complex field maneuvers at the word of command?

Y.M. Not if he were a thorough idiot.

O.M. Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all
sorts of wonderful things. They must surely be able to notice, and to
put things together, and say to themselves, "I get the idea, now: when I
do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently I
am punished." Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.

Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low
plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that is
well up toward man?

O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage
race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the
superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental
qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which
separates man and beast.

O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist.

Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say
there is no such frontier.

O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the
mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this's
and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew the same
inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery was just like
his, also its manner of working. Their equipment was as inferior to the
Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference--there is no frontier.

Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It
elevates the dumb beasts to--to--

O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed
Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb beast.

Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion?

O.M. On quite simple ones. "Dumb" beast suggests an animal that has no
thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating
what is in its mind. We know that a hen HAS speech. We cannot
understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her
phrases. We know when she is saying, "I have laid an egg"; we know when
she is saying to the chicks, "Run here, dears, I've found a worm"; we
know what she is saying when she voices a warning: "Quick! hurry! gather
yourselves under mamma, there's a hawk coming!" We understand the cat
when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment
and lifts up a soft voice and says, "Come, kitties, supper's ready"; we
understand her when she goes mourning about and says, "Where can they be?
They are lost. Won't you help me hunt for them?" and we understand the
disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, "You come
over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I'll make your fur fly!"
We understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn to understand a few
of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we
domesticate and observe. The clearness and exactness of the few of the
hen's speeches which we understand is argument that she can communicate
to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend--in a word, that
she can converse. And this argument is also applicable in the case of
others of the great army of the Unrevealed. It is just like man's vanity
and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull
perceptions. Now as to the ant--

Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that--as you seem to
think--sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between
man and the Unrevealed.

O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal
Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. The ant
is an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a
strong and enduring house eight feet high--a house which is as large in
proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the
world compared to man's size. No savage race has produced architects who
could approach the air in genius or culture. No civilized race has
produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed
than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her
young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and
they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them
are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for
convenience and adaptability.

Y.M. That could be mere instinct.

O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further
before we decide. The ant has soldiers--battalions, regiments, armies;
and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to
battle.

Y.M. That could be instinct, too.

O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it
is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on.

Y.M. Instinct again.

O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of
forced labor.

Y.M. Instinct.

O.M. She has cows, and milks them.

Y.M. Instinct, of course.

O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds
it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away.

Y.M. Instinct, all the same.

O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John Lubbock
took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and laid
them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. Ants from the
nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then
carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. Sir John
repeated the experiment a number of times. For a time the sober ants did
as they had done at first--carried their friends home and threw the
strangers overboard. But finally they lost patience, seeing that their
reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and
strangers overboard. Come--is this instinct, or is it thoughtful and
intelligent discussion of a thing new--absolutely new--to their
experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment
executed? Is it instinct?--thought petrified by ages of habit--or isn't
it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new
circumstances?

Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all the
look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you
phrase it. I believe it was thought.

O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup of
sugar on a table in his room. The ants got at it. He tried several
preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one
which shut off access--probably set the table's legs in pans of water, or
drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don't remember. At any rate, he
watched to see what they would do. They tried various schemes--failures,
every one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they held a
consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision--and this time
they beat that great philosopher. They formed in procession, cross the
floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over
the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into it! Was that
instinct--thought petrified by ages of inherited habit?

Y.M. No, I don't believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned
scheme to meet a new emergency.

O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances.
I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior
of any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many experiments that an
ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the
stranger is disguised--with paint. Also he proved that an ant knows
every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand souls. Also, after
a year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway
recognize the returned absentee and grace the recognition with a
affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions made? Not by color,
for painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for ants that had been
dipped in chloroform were recognized. Not by speech and not by antennae
signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless ants were recognized
and the friend discriminated from the stranger. The ants were all of the
same species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and
feature--friends who formed part of a hive of five hundred thousand! Has
any man a memory for form and feature approaching that?

Y.M. Certainly not.

O.M. Franklin's ants and Lubbuck's ants show fine capacities of putting
this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting smart
conclusions from the combinations--a man's mental process exactly. With
memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings, reflects
upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by stage, to
far results--from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound's complex engine;
from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to palace; from the
capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from nomadic life to
stable government and concentrated authority; from incoherent hordes to
massed armies. The ant has observation, the reasoning faculty, and the
preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's
development and the essential features of his civilization, and you call
it all instinct!

Y.M. Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself.

O.M. Well, don't tell anybody, and don't do it again.

Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result--as I understand it--I am
required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier
separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?

O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such
frontier--there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more
capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and
works in the same way. And neither he nor those others can command the
machine--it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it
pleases, and when it doesn't please, it can't be forced.

Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental
machinery, and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude
between them, except in quality, not in kind.

O.M. That is about the state of it--intellectuality. There are
pronounced limitations on both sides. We can't learn to understand much
of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a
very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On the
other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine
and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.

Y.M. Very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is
still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven't got the Moral Sense; we have
it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.

O.M. What makes you think that?

Y.M. Now look here--let's call a halt. I have stood the other infamies
and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the
other animals put on the same level morally.

O.M. I wasn't going to hoist man up to that.

Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such
things.

O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple
truth--and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from
wrong proves his INTELLECTUAL superiority to the other creatures; but the
fact that he can DO wrong proves his MORAL inferiority to any creature
that CANNOT. It is my belief that this position is not assailable.



Free Will

Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?

O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the
old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?

Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her
to suffer. Isn't it so?

O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the
one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a
strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the
spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two
appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?

Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in
doing it he exercised Free Will.

O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free Will,
and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice between
good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in that
man's case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his training, and
the daily influences which had molded him and made him what he was,
COMPELLED him to rescue the old woman and thus save HIMSELF--save himself
from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness. He did not make the
choice, it was made FOR him by forces which he could not control. Free
Will has always existed in WORDS, but it stops there, I think--stops
short of FACT. I would not use those words--Free Will--but others.

Y.M. What others?

O.M. Free Choice.

Y.M. What is the difference?

O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to ACT as you please, the other
implies nothing beyond a mere MENTAL PROCESS: the critical ability to
determine which of two things is nearest right and just.

Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.

O.M. The mind can freely SELECT, CHOOSE, POINT OUT the right and just
one--its function stops there. It can go no further in the matter. It
has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the
wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.

Y.M. The man's?

O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and
the character which has been built around it by training and environment.

Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?

O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington's
machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong
one.

Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and
judicially points out which of two things is right and just--

O.M. Yes, and his MORAL machinery will freely act upon the other or the
other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the MIND'S
feeling concerning the matter--that is, WOULD be, if the mind had any
feelings; which it hasn't. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the
heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.

Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man KNOWS which of two things is
right he is absolutely BOUND to do that thing?

O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he
will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the mater.
Wasn't it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. Then it would have been equally RIGHT for any one else to do it?

Y.M. Certainly.

O.M. Then it would have been RIGHT for a born coward to attempt it?

Y.M. It would--yes.

O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't
you?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. You know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an
absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't
you?

Y.M. Yes, I know it.

O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be RIGHT to try it?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be RIGHT to
try it?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can NOT essay
it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why claim
that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? Why
content that because he and David SEE the right alike, both must ACT
alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?

Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?

O.M. It is what I think. There is WILL. But it has nothing to do with
INTELLECTUAL PERCEPTIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG, and is not under their
command. David's temperament and training had Will, and it was a
compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The
coward's temperament and training possess Will, and IT is compulsory; it
commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. But
neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will--will that may do
the right or do the wrong, as their MENTAL verdict shall decide.