Explanatory Notes
Apparatus Notes
MTPDocEd
[begin page 121]
The Ten Commandments

(1905 or 1906)

In his Autobiographical Dictation of 25 June 1906 Clemens said:

Man is not to blame for what he is. He didn't make himself. He has no control over himself. All the control is vested in his temperament—which he did not create—and in the circumstances which hedge him round, from the cradle to the grave, and which he did not devise and cannot change . . . He is a subject for pity, not blame—and not contempt.

This view is in accord with the contention of “The Ten Commandments” that man is no more blamable than the animals for acting according to his temperament and that to punish man for violating laws is unjust, though politic. On another occasion, Clemens took a somewhat different view—that man requires commandments in order to have the pleasure of breaking them. Isabel V. Lyon, Clemens' secretary, noted in one of her journals on 26 March 1905:

This morning when I went into Mr. Clemens's room he asked me something about Moses & the 10 Commandments, and that lead up to making Mr. Clemens say “If those ten Commandments had never been written, man would be making some for himself. He has to have a code—he'd be saying—Thou shalt not sit up all night. Thou shalt not drink coffee at midnight. Thou shalt not eat cabbage & beans.” “They would all be Commandments that he is in need of and he wouldn't be happy if he wasn't making them to break.”

The character Slade, who like the Chicago murderer Holmes, is presented in the essay as an example of the “man-tiger,” is discussed at greater length in Chapters 9 through 11 of Roughing It.

“The Ten Commandments” is Paine's title.

Textual Commentary

The manuscript copy-text is headed “III”; the work may have been conceived as, or may once have been, a chapter of a longer piece. There are no textual notes, and no ambiguous compound is hyphenated at the end of a line in the manuscript.

[begin page 122]
The Ten Commandments

The Ten emendation Commandments were made for man alone. We should think it strange if they had been made for all the animals.alteration in the MS

We should say “Thouemendation shalt not kill” is too general, too sweeping. It includes the field mouse and the butterfly. They can't kill. And it includes the tiger, which can't help it.

It is a case of Temperament and Circumstance again. You can arrange no circumstances that can move the field mouse and the butterfly to kill; their temperaments will keep them unaffected by temptations to kill, they can avoid that crime without an effort. But it isn't so with the tiger. Throw a lamb in his way when he is hungry, and his temperament will compel him to kill it.

Butterflies and field mice are common among men; they can't kill, their temperaments make it impossible. There are tigers among men, also. Their temperaments move them to violence, and when Circumstance furnishes the opportunity and the powerful motive, they kill. They can't help it.

No penal law can deal out justice; it must deal out injustice in every instance. Penal laws have a high value, in that they protect—in a considerable measure—the multitude of the gentle-natured from the violent minority.

For a penal law is a Circumstance. It is a warning which intrudes [begin page 123] and stays a would-be murderer's hand—sometimes. Not always, but in many and many a case. It can't stop the real man-tiger; nothing can do that. Slade had 26 deliberatealteration in the MS murders on his soul when he finally went to his death on the scaffold. He would kill a man for a trifle; or for nothing. He loved to kill. It was his temperament. He didalteration in the MS not make his temperament, God gave it him at his birth. Gave it him and said Thou shalt not kill. It was like saying Thou shalt not eat. Both appetites were given him at birth. He could be obedient and starve both up to a certain point, but that was as far as he could go. Another man could go further; but not Slade.

Holmes, the Chicago monster, inveigledemendation some dozens of men and women into his obscure quarters and privately butchered them. Holmes's inborn nature was such that whenever he had what seemed a reasonably safe opportunity to kill a stranger he couldn't successfully resist the temptation to do it.

Justice was finally meted out to Slade and to Holmes. That is what the newspapers said. It is a common phrase, and a very old one. But it probably isn't true. When a man is hanged for slaying one man that phrase comes into service and we learn that justice was meted out to the slayer. But Holmes slew sixty. There seems to be a discrepancy in this distribution of justice. If Holmes got justice, the other man got 59 times more than justice.

Butalteration in the MS the phrase is wrong, anyway. The word is the wrong word. Criminal courts do not dispense “justice”—they can't; they only dispense protections to the community. It is all they can do.

Editorial Emendations The Ten Commandments
  ¶The Ten ●  centered III ¶ The Ten
  Thou ●  thou
  inveigled ●  inviegled
Alterations in the Manuscript The Ten Commandments
 animals.] followed by canceled paragraph ‘Why should we think it strange?’.
 deliberate] followed by canceled ‘and’.
 He did] follows canceled ‘God gave’.
 But] follows canceled paragraph ‘But the word is the wrong’; ‘word’ canceled first with no substitution.