Copy of letter from ProfessorⒶtextual note Henderson in regard to Mr. Clemens’s book, “What isⒶtextual note Man?” Mr. Clemens tells of the writing of this book, the laying of one chapter of it before the Monday Evening Club, and the final publication of two hundred and fiftyⒶtextual note copies by Doubleday.
I shall continue the narrative of my adventures in England pretty soon, but my interest in that matter is for the moment pushed aside by a letter which has arrived this morning from Professor Henderson. Henderson was a fellow-passenger of mine when I sailed for England in June, and after I had come to know him, and like him, and trust him, I privately and confidentially gave him a copy of “What isⒶtextual note Man?”Ⓔexplanatory note
Many a time in the past eight or nine years I have been strongly moved to publish that little book, but the doubtfulness of the wisdom of doing it has always been a little stronger than the desire to do it, consequently the venture has not been made; necessarily it has not been made, for, according to my own gospel, as set forth in that small book, where there are two desires in a man’s heart he has no choice between the two, but must obey the strongest, there being no such thing as free will in the composition of any human being that ever lived.
I have talked my gospel rather freely in conversation for twenty-five or thirty years, and have never much minded whether my listeners liked it or not, but I couldn’t get beyond that—the idea of actually publishing always brought me a shudder; by anticipation I couldn’t bear the reproaches which would assail me from a public which had been trained from the cradle along opposite lines of thought, and for that reason—which is a quite sufficient reason—would not be able to understand me. I had early proved all this, for I laid one chapter of my gospel before the Monday Evening Club in Hartford, a quarter of a century ago, and there was not a man there who didn’t scoff at it, jeer at it, [begin page 127] revile at it, and call it a lie—a thousand times a lie! That was the chapter denying that there is any such thing as personal meritⒺexplanatory note; maintaining that a man is merely a machine automatically functioned without any of his help, or any occasion or necessity for his help, and that no machine is entitled to praise for any of its acts of a virtuous sort, nor blamable for any of its acts of the opposite sort. Incidentally, I observed that the human machine gets all its inspirations from the outside, and is not capable of originating an idea of any kind in its own head; and I further remarked, incidentally, that no man ever does a duty for duty’s sake but only for the sake of the satisfaction he personally gets out of doing the duty, or for the sake of avoiding the personal discomfort he would have to endure if he shirked that duty; also I indicated that there is no such thing as free will, and no such thing as self-sacrificeⒶtextual note.
The Club handled me without gloves. They said I was trying to strip man of his dignity, and I said I shouldn’t succeed, for it would not be possible to strip him of a quality which he did not possess. They said that if this insane doctrine of mine were accepted by the world life would no longer be worth living; but I said that that would merely leave life in the condition it was before.
Those were the brightest minds in Hartford—and indeed they were very superior minds—but my little batch of quite simple and unassailable truths could get no entrance into them, because the entrances were all stopped up with stupid misteachings handed down by stupid ancestors, and docilely accepted without examination, whereas until those minds should be unstopped they would not be competent to intelligently examine my gospel and intelligently pass upon it. No mind, howsoever brilliant, is in a condition to examine a proposition which is opposed to its teachings and its heredities until, as pointed out by Lord Bacon some centuries agoⒺexplanatory note, those prejudices, predilections, and inheritances shall have been swept away. I realized that night that since those able men were such children, such incompetents, in the presence of an unfamiliar doctrine, there could be but one result if my gospel should be placed before the general public: it would make not a single convert, and I should be looked upon as a lunatic, besides; therefore I put aside the idea of elaborating my notions and spreading them abroad in a book.
The sorrowful effort of that night consisted partly of a skeleton sketch, but mainly of talk. Years went by, and at last, in Vienna in 1898, I wrote out and completed one chapter, using the dialogue form in place of the essay form. I read it to Frank N. Doubleday, who was passing through Vienna, and he wanted to take it and publish itⒺexplanatory note, but I was not minded to submit it to print and criticism. I added a paragraph or a chapter now and then, as time went by, and at last in 1902 I finished it; and I further finished it, in 1904, by destroying the concluding chapter, whose subject was “The Moral Sense.” The fact is, I couldn’t even stand that chapter myself; all the other chapters were sweet and gentle, but that one was disrespectful—in fact riotousⒺexplanatory note.
Again Doubleday wanted to publish, but I remembered Hartford, and said no. He proposed a submerged and private circulation of the little torpedo, and I acceded to that. He got two hundred and fifty copies printed for meⒺexplanatory note at the De Vinne Press, and J. W. Boswell, chief of one of De Vinne’s departments, took out a copyrightⒶtextual note in his own name, [begin page 128] by request, and doesn’t yet know who wrote the book. Doubleday has sent ten or twelve copies to men here, and in England, through Mr. Boswell, (the authorship concealed, of course,) and I myself have given away four copies to discreet persons. The following is the Preface to “What isⒶtextual note Man?”
February, 1905. The studies for these papers were begun twenty-five or twenty-seven years ago. The papers were written seven years ago. I have examined them once or twice per year since and found them satisfactory. I have just examined them again, and am still satisfied that they speak the truth.
Every thought in them has been thought (and accepted as unassailable truth) by millions upon millions of men—and concealed, kept private. Why did they not speak out? Because they dreaded (and could not bear) the disapproval of the people around them. Why have not I published? The same reason has restrained me, I think. I can find no other.
The italicized phrase is from the book, where it is maintained that men often do perilous things which they don’t want to do, but are so constituted by nature that they can’t bear to leave them undone, whereas a man differently constituted could leave themⒶtextual note undone without any discomfort to himself. In this place I will insert Professor Henderson’s letter:
Salisbury, N.C.
Aug. 26, 1907.
My dear Mr. Clemens:
I hope that by this time you have recovered from the effects of the magnificent ovation that was given you in England. Is it not Goethe who says that when a man becomes truly great, the world does everything it can to prevent him from doing other great thingsⒺexplanatory note—with its receptions, dinners, and diversions of a thousand different kinds?
I wish very much that it had been possible for me to run out to see you when I was in New York the other day; but, unfortunately, I was compelled to come straight home. Since I have been here, I have read the book—What Is Man?—which you most kindly sent me in London, and am startled to discover that your observations made from a close and direct study of man au naturel, so to speak, coincide at most points with the views of the greatest modern thinkers, who style themselves philosophers and who never write anything without conscious philosophic intention.
I find that not only does Mr. Shaw agree with you in your general thesis: that from his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object but one—to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself; he has actually written a play to epitomize this thesis. And the very point of departure of that play was the atmospheric enunciation of your doctrine that none but gods have ever had a thought which did not come from the outside. Dick Dudgeon, in The Devil’s Disciple, becomes a devil’s advocate because he has been driven to it by the excessive, outrageous puritanism of his family, and the soul-destroying religious narrowness of his environment. He deliberately goes to the scaffold to save the life of a man, a minister, for whom he has neither affection, devotion, loyalty, nor indeed [begin page 129] ties of any sort whatsoever. When the minister’s wife, sentimentally fancying that Dick has made the sacrifice for her sake, goes to the prison and offers him her love, he staggers her by scorning her proffered love with more than Puritan asceticism. He has done it, i.e. saved the minister, not for her, not for any alien, but for himself. It was the law of his own nature that he obeyed. He had to satisfy that inner demand for spiritual contentment. With Dick, as with Martin Luther, the mot d’ordre Ⓔexplanatory note was: Ich kann nicht anders Ⓔexplanatory note. As Mr. Shaw once explained, Dick could no more refuse the imperious command of his own nature than a fireman could refuse to rescue a child from a burning building. And in the same play, the minister undergoes a like transformation—equally miraculous in the eyes of the world, but perfectly natural to himself, since it consisted in the discovery of the real Will which animated him.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Henrick Ibsen, and Bernard Shaw all insist, more or less explicitly, upon repudiation of duty. Nietzsche is intent upon doing away with the ordinary concepts of Good and Evil, and of entering upon a new dispensation of supermorality where abstract standards of right and wrong shall be replaced by relative standards, where conscience, so called, shall be superseded by an increased sense of personal responsibility. Throughout his entire work, Ibsen plainly insists that conformity to conventional notions of duty is just as likely to lead to evil as to good results, and that failure to fulfil the individual will is nothing short of a crime against oneself. The frequently employed Ibsenic phrase “to live one’s own life” means this, if it means anything. He is the great Protestant, demanding everywhere private right of judgment in matters of conduct. Satisfaction of one’s inner nature, not conformity to conventional standards of duty, is Ibsen’s supreme test of conduct.
It is a fundamental theory of Mr. Shaw’s that people never do anything for duty’s sake only, or even primarily. Like Nietzsche, he believes that convictions are prisons, and that rationalism is bankrupt because sufficient reasons can always be found for the justification of any particular line of conduct. People do things, not at all because they ought to, but because they want to; and then they seek ex post facto excuses for their actions. But he is no mad advocate for the Rabelaisian motto, Fais ce que tu veux Ⓔexplanatory note, for the man in the street. Institutions having fixed standards of duty must continue for a long time to come in order to do the thinking for the vast mass of people who will not think for themselves—to aid the individual to identify the individual will with the world-will. And I feel sure that his theory of Free Will is identical with your own.
It has been a great privilege to read your book, and to find that you have given explicit expression to the most fecund philosophic conceptions of this age. You have made perfectly concrete many notions which are only implicit in certain great works of modern art. And your Admonition is beyond praise: “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.”
I enclose a copy of one of the three or four interviews with me in the New York papers of about a week ago.
Give my kindest regards to Mr. Ashcroft, and accept my sincerest good wishes for your health and happiness.
Faithfully,
Archibald Henderson.
Blythewood.
[begin page 130] I have not read Nietzsche or IbsenⒺexplanatory note, nor any other philosopher, and have not needed to do it, and have not desired to do it; I have gone to the fountain-head for information—that is to say, to the human race. Every man is in his own person the whole human race, with not a detail lacking. I am the whole human race without a detail lacking; I have studied the human race with diligence and strong interest all these years in my own person; in myself I find in big or little proportion every quality and every defect that is findable in the mass of the race. I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born; I knew I should not find a single original thought in any philosophy, and I knew I could not furnish one to the world myself, if I had five centuries to invent it in. Nietzsche published his book, and was at once pronounced crazy by the world—by a world which included tens of thousands of bright, sane men who believed exactly as Nietzsche believed, but concealed the fact, and scoffed at Nietzsche. What a coward every man is! and how surely he will find it out if he will just let other people alone and sit down and examine himself. The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
Professor Henderson . . . a copy of “What is Man?”] Archibald Henderson was the official biographer of George Bernard Shaw (see AD, 25 July 1907, note at 73.16–17). Clemens composed his philosophical dialogue What Is Man? between 1898 and late 1905, and had a limited edition printed for private distribution in 1906 ( AutoMT2 , 602–3 n. 332.35–36; SLC 1906a).
I laid one chapter of my gospel before the Monday Evening Club . . . denying that there is any such thing as personal merit] Clemens addressed the Monday Evening Club on 19 February 1883, reading an essay entitled “What Is Happiness?” To judge from a notebook entry a little before this, the essay is the germ from which What Is Man? would spring: “Is anybody or any action ever unselfish? (Good theme for Club Essay)” ( N&J2 , 498 n. 214). Clemens’s essay, as given before the club, formed no part of the eventual book What Is Man? (see the note at 127.31–33; WIM , 4, 11–20, 124–214; for the Monday Evening Club, see AutoMT1 , 558 n. 269.1–6).
as pointed out by Lord Bacon some centuries ago] Francis Bacon (1561–1626) held that philosophical progress is impeded by “idols”—inherited prejudices and inherent frailties. In his Novum Organum (1620) he called for “entirely abolishing common theories and notions, and applying the mind afresh, when thus cleared and levelled, to particular researches” (Francis Bacon 1841, 3:362).
in Vienna in 1898, I wrote out and completed one chapter . . . Frank N. Doubleday, who was passing through Vienna, and he wanted to take it and publish it] The compositional history of What Is Man? is complicated; for an account of it, see WIM , 603–9. Frank Nelson Doubleday (1862–1934) was a publisher; in 1897 he had just set up a publishing firm with S. S. McClure; in 1900 it became Doubleday, Page and Company. What Clemens read to Doubleday was presumably the manuscript “What Is the Real Character of ‘Conscience?,’ ” written in Vienna and Kaltenleutgeben in April and July 1898. After revisions, reshuffling, and a change of title, this would form about one-half the matter of What Is Man? ( WIM , 11–15, 603–9). In his memoirs, Doubleday disclaims any personal interest in Clemens’s philosophy: “I thought that the whole thing was a crazy piece of business and urged him to forget it, but he thought it the best thing he had ever written. . . . It was, I always thought, a poor thing, and I think so yet” (Doubleday 1972, 87–88).
destroying the concluding chapter, whose subject was “The Moral Sense.” . . . that one was disrespectful—in fact riotous] “The Moral Sense,” probably written in July 1898, was removed from the first typescript of What Is Man? and does not appear in the printed edition; but other manuscript and typed versions survive in the Mark Twain Papers. It argues that mankind would be better off in the condition of the animals, lacking the moral sense and not subject to moral standards. It is not especially “riotous,” however, and Clemens may be thinking of another omitted chapter, entitled “God,” which he seems to have considered briefly as a replacement for the omitted “Moral Sense” ( WIM , 472–75, 476–92).
two hundred and fifty copies printed for me] Copyright was registered to J. W. Bothwell (not “Boswell”), the general manager of the De Vinne Press. Two hundred and fifty copies were ready in August 1906.
Is it not Goethe who says . . . to prevent him from doing other great things] From Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann: “If you do anything for the sake of the world, it will take good care that you shall not do it a second time” (Goethe 1930, 38).
mot d’ordre] “Watchword.”
Ich kann nicht anders] “I cannot do otherwise”: words attributed to Martin Luther, addressing the Diet of Worms in 1521.
Fais ce que tu veux] In Gargantua (1534) by Rabelais, the motto of the Abbey of Thélème is “Fais ce que tu voudras” (“Do what thou wilt”).
I have not read Nietzsche or Ibsen] Clemens was not absolutely innocent of acquaintance with these authors. In 1890 Olivia remarked in a letter that she was reading Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (in German, apparently), and intended to read Ghosts next. Clemens mentioned Ibsen as a leading man of the times in the manuscript fragment “Ancients in Modern Dress” (1896–97), without implying familiarity with his work; later, in 1906, he owned a volume of Ibsen’s collected works containing Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder in the translations of Edmund Gosse and William Archer. Clemens had also looked over Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, in Isabel Lyon’s copy, on 8 August 1906—reportedly exclaiming afterward “Oh damn Nietzsche! He couldn’t write a lucid sentence to save his soul” (Gribben 1980, 1:343, 2:508; OLC to King, 25 Feb 1890, photocopy in CU-MARK; Brahm and Robinson 2005).
Source document.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 4028–37 (altered in ink to 3128–37 and subsequently to 2228–37), made from Hobby’s notes.SLC 1906a What Is Man? (SLC 1906a): ‘February, 1905 . . . no other.’ (128.5–13).
TS1 has no markings or revisions by SLC, a situation rarely met with in the Autobiography.
One passage derives from the Preface to What Is Man? Although the passage varies slightly in formatting and paragraphing from the book, then just recently printed (SLC 1906a), we conclude that Hobby did copy from the book; had she expanded her own stenographic notes of Clemens’s reading, her text and the book would be unlikely to coincide substantively, as they do. For this passage we follow SLC 1906a, and we do not record what are presumed to be Hobby’s accidental variations from copy. For Archibald Henderson’s letter to Clemens (128.19–129.48), the original is missing; our text follows TS1.