MARK TWAIN probably wrote this prior to the main dialogue, inasmuch as he used numbers rather than “O.M.–Y.M.” to designate the speakers. The paper is a double-ruled stationery of European make similar to paper he used for What Is Man? in 1898, except that this type is thick and soft in texture. Since he began using such paper in 1897, that year is the most likely date of composition. See the Textual Notes on What Is Man? for information concerning all manuscript paper noted here.

1. What are the moral qualities?

They are but two—love and hate. From each of these trees spring many branches, and the branches bear a variety of names: such as Charity, Pity, Forgiveness, Self-sacrifice, and so on, in the one case; and Greed, Envy, Revenge, and so on, in the other. Each tree has a hundred branches, and each branch has a name; but the sap that feeds them all and is the life of them all, is the same: Love, in the one case, Hate in the other.

[begin page 469]

These are the Trees of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Man has eaten of both, the beasts have eaten of neither.

This has given man the Moral Sense. The beast has not the Moral Sense. It is this that to a large degree determines what is man and what is beast.

What is the peculiar and sole function of the Moral Sense?

To enable us to do wrong.

2. No, it has a higher and nobler function—to enable us to do right (by teaching us what is right.)

1. You think so.

2. Certainly I do.

1. Can a beast do wrong?

2. No; for it is without consciousness.

1. Guilt cannot be attributed to a beast, then?

2. No.

1. Then whatever a beast does is right,—certainly not wrong.

2. Yes.

1. Then where the Moral Sense does not exist, only Right exists,—or its equivalent,—and there is no such thing as Wrong.

2. Evidently—yes.

1. Then it is as I said: the peculiar and sole function of the Moral Sense is to enable us to do wrong. It cannot enable us to do right, for without it we cannot do anything but right or its guiltless equivalent. I therefore repeat, and desire to burn into your memory and consciousness the simple truth that the only function the Moral Sense has or can exercise is to enable us to do wrong.

And so we arrive at this fact: that one of the two (claimed) moral superiorities which man possesses above the beast is that he can do wrong. Why is he proud of this defect? Can you explain it? Would it not be a strange thing to see a man who was filled with the germs of a hundred filthy diseases going around boasting about it among the healthy, with his nose in the air?

2. But his superiority does not consist merely in his ability to do wrong, but in this added quality: that to him is given the ability to avoid doing wrong, by taking thought and by watching himself.

1. Is that a valuable quality?

2. Certainly. And a lofty one.

[begin page 470]

1. Do you like a good watch?

2. Yes.

1. Do you prefer it to a poor one?

2. Certainly.

1. Which would you prefer? To be born with a sound body, or with a body cursed with the taint of hereditary leprosy?

2. With a sound body, of course?

1. Among created beings has man a moral superior?

2. Yes—one.

1. Who is that?

2. The angel.

1. Wherein lies his moral superiority?

2. He is born without sin, and—

1. And what? Without the ability to commit it?

2. Yes.

1. The beast and the angel, then, are moral twins?

2. Why—yes, it would seem so.

1. And yet, for one and the same reason the beast is man's moral inferior and the angel is his moral superior. Is this doubtful logic?

2. Proceed.

1. Has God distinctly testified that He holds in dearer affection and approval the animal that lacks the Moral Sense than the animal that has it?

2. I think not. How do you arrive at this?

1. Adam and Eve were without it. They were like the other animals—they could do right only, they did not know how to do wrong; for them, wrong had no existence. God tried to keep them pure and sinless, like the beasts and the angels, but he failed. Is not this true?

2. Yes.

1. What happened then?

2. They fell.

1. Fell from the estate of beasts and angels down to the estate of man?

2. “Fell” does not mean that they fell to a lower moral estate; it merely means that they fell from His grace and approval.

1. They went down, or they went up. Which was it?

2. They acquired the Moral Sense, and thus rose to an estate which was higher and better than their former one.

[begin page 471]

1. They fell up, then; out of what He wanted them to be and into something superior to that. Still, He did not want them to fall up, but to remain as they were?

2. Yes.

1. He loved them?

2. Unquestionably.

1. He desired to do the best for them He could?

2. Undoubtedly.

1. He knew what was best for them better than they could know?

2. Certainly.

1. And He wanted them to remain without the Moral Sense—like the beasts and the angels—incapable of doing wrong.

2. Why—it seems so.

1. Couldn't you say it is so?

2. I must grant it.

1. I think you must; for when they rose by falling, He was so angered that He punished them calamitously—and their whole race after them. You are obliged to concede that it amply proves His stern disapproval of the Moral Sense—that quality whose peculiar and sole function is to enable its possessor to do wrong. Tell me, why do you have that phrase “the beasts that perish?”

2. Because they do perish, forever.

1. Why? Because they lack the Moral Sense?—that quality which God so strenuously disapproves of?

2. Partly that, but also because they have no soul.

1. What is the soul?

2. It is that something in us which enables us to know God and adore Him.

1. Adam had it?

2. Yes. It was his great birthright.

1. The angels had it?

2. Yes.

1. But they lacked the Moral Sense. Adam acquired that—by force. He is accounted a little lower than the angels—by that much, we may presume. It is demonstrably a pity that he acquired for himself and for us that taint, that disease, that grotesque incumbrance, that thing hated of God. It is like a sound dog interesting itself to acquire rabies, [begin page 472] so that it can destroy itself and its race; it is like a wise man interesting himself to become an idiot and transmit the taint; it is like a saint, secure of heaven, buying the privilege, transmissible to his heirs and assigns, of exchanging it for hell when so inclined. And when a man is proud of his Moral Sense, proud because he can do wrong and a beast cannot, surely he is a pathetic object. He is a watch that is vain because it is a poor thing and can go wrong; he is a man who is vain because there is leprosy in his blood.

PROBABLY written in July 1898; chapter 4 in the original sequence. The paper is a white wove Mark Twain also used for the main dialogue in 1898. This section was in the first What Is Man? typescript but the pages were removed and destroyed. The text here is that of the second typescript, which incorporates revisions apparently made in the first, and it has been checked against the manuscript.

O. M. What is the Moral Sense, as you understand it?

Y. M. The knowledge of right and wrong; the ability to tell right from wrong.

O. M. Without it what would our condition be?

Y. M. For us there would be no right and no wrong; the terms would have no meaning; they would describe things which were non-existent.

O. M. We couldn't do right?

Y. M. No; there being no such thing as right.

O. M. We couldn't do wrong?

Y. M. No; there being no such thing as wrong.

O. M. The Moral Sense, then, creates right for us?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Also enables us to perceive the right?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Also enables us to do right?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Without it we could not do right?

[begin page 473]

Y. M. Of course not.

O. M. That is a valuable office.

Y. M. Unspeakably precious.

O. M. It also creates wrong?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Also enables us to perceive the wrong?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Also enables us to do wrong?

Y. M. Y-yes.

O. M. Without it we could not do wrong?

Y. M. No—that is—well, no.

O. M. That is a valuable office?

Y. M. I—

O. M. I know what you are going to say: “it is an unspeakably precious office.”

Y. M. I—well, I do not know that I was going to say that, for I had not thought of that side of it. But at any rate it must be valuable, it must be precious, or we shouldn't have it.

O. M. I see you have the reasoning faculty. You can put this and that together—like an Edison, like an ant, like an elephant.

Y. M. Stick to the subject! Go on.

O. M. You have been changing watches, I see.

Y. M. Yes; the other one didn't keep time.

O. M. This one is better?

Y. M. Oh, immensely better; perfect, in fact.

O. M. The other one gave you trouble?

Y. M. No end of it. I had to be forever fussing with it and tinkering at it to make it go right, or it would be always going wrong. This one doesn't know how to go wrong.

O. M. It's the other one that has the Moral Sense?

Y. M. I don't get your drift.

O. M. Never mind, it isn't important. I wonder if Adam was a good man. Do you think he was a good man?

Y. M. Adam? Why, he was not merely good, up to the Fall, he was perfect—absolutely perfect; and could have remained so if he and Eve had listened to God their friend instead of to Satan their enemy.

O. M. God wanted to have him remain as he was?—preferred him so?

[begin page 474]

Y. M. Infinitely. He loved him, He walked and talked with him; when he fell He drove him from the Garden and turned His back upon him.

O. M. It was because he ate the apple?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. The apple revealed to him the knowledge of good and evil?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. It gave him the Moral Sense?

Y. M. Y-yes.

O. M. It created good and evil in the world, and enabled him to do both?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. He was wholly without the Moral Sense before?

Y. M. Wholly.

O. M. God infinitely preferred him without it?

Y. M. Why—yes.

O. M. To get it he didn't rise, but fell?

Y. M. Y-yes.

O. M. Only when without the Moral Sense was he perfect in the eyes of God?

Y. M. Yes—it is true.

O. M. Have the other animals the Moral Sense?

Y. M. No, they haven't.

O. M. A while ago you said “we have it and it lifts us immeasurably above them.” What made you think that? Do you set up your estimate of the value of the Moral Sense as being superior to God's?

Y. M. Well, I—I didn't invent my estimate, it was taught me. I never looked at the thing in this way before.

O. M. You prefer a watch that doesn't know how to go wrong. I think you are right. Adam was perfect before he got the Moral Sense, imperfect as soon as he got it. In the one case he couldn't do wrong, in the other he could. Adam fell; the other animals have not fallen. By the supreme verdict of God they are morally perfect.

Y. M. You said you were not going to put man and the other animals on the same level morally.

O. M. I haven't. I have put man where he belongs—very much below the others.

[begin page 475]

Y. M. Do you say that seriously?

O. M. Yes, with entire seriousness and sincerity. I side with God. His estimate of the Moral Sense is sufficient for me. Whenever I look at the other animals and realize that whatever they do is blameless and that they can't do wrong, I envy them the dignity of their estate, its purity and its loftiness, and recognise that the Moral Sense is a thoroughly disastrous thing.

Y. M. Why, without it there would be no dignity. It is man's ability to perceive wrong, and then to struggle with it, fight it day and night and all his life, and triumph over it, that gives him dignity.

O. M. Yes; as much as tinkering at a tin watch.

WRITTEN shortly after “The Moral Sense”; numbered chapter 5; paper as in “The Moral Sense.” A notebook entry for August 1898, among other examples of the selfishness all actions have in common, contains a scarcely intelligible plan of continuation:

Y. M. You have placed Man, the noblest work of God, in the same ship, intellectually—man in the first cabin and the brutes in the steerage; and morally you place the brutes far above man. It is shameful. What is your general opinion of man, anyway?

O. M. That he is a very poor thing.

Y. M. Where do you get that idea?

O. M. Mainly from God, partly from observation.

Y. M. How from God?

O. M. Morally and in all other details but one—intellect—man is away below the other animals. God does not value intellect.

Y. M. Where is your proof?

O. M. In the accounts of heaven. There it is all harping, hymning, hosannahing, hurrahing, in a Rococo New Jerusalem—dissipations [begin page 476] which feed merely the sentimental emotions. There are no intellectual employments there, no intellectual society. He has not praised any man for his intellect, he has not encouraged intellectual pursuits or ambitions in any way; he has offered no rewards for intellectual achievement; his promises are restricted to the meek, the righteous, the obedient, the truthful, the reverent, the pure, the God-fearing—moral specialties, all of them.

Y. M. That does not prove that He does not value intellect.

O. M. You are working your reasoning-machinery again. If He did not mention the moral qualities, nor encourage them nor reward them, what would you infer from that?

Y. M. That is nothing, He does care for intellect.

O. M. That settles it.

WRITTEN in 1898, paper as in “The Moral Sense.” The dialogue has its own pagination, but Mark Twain planned it as a continuation of the main text. There is a contemporary typescript, stapled in a folder in the same way as the first typescript of What Is Man?, though typed on a different machine. The cover reads “Continuation” at the top, “15” beneath it, whereas the other typescript is “14.” The numbers probably indicate an order of packing for one of the family's trips, perhaps from Austria to England or from England to America. At another time Mark Twain wrote “IV” on the cover, followed by a question mark, suggesting that he thought of replacing “The Moral Sense” with “God” as chapter 4. What Is the Real Character of Conscience?—an early title of What Is Man?—is typed on the cover. Much later, probably in 1905, Mark Twain printed “NOT TO BE USED” across the cover. The text is based on the manuscript, but it incorporates his holograph revisions in the typescript.

Young Man. You mention God every now and then, and yet I take it that at bottom you are an Atheist.

Old Man. How? You think I believe there is no God—Supreme Being—Creator and sole Lord of the Universe?

Y. M. Yes.

[begin page 477]

O. M. It is a mistake. I do believe He exists. I do not claim to know it, but I believe it; and with all my might. I think He is not a bunch of laws, but a Personality.

Y. M. And that He is all-powerful?

O. M. Yes.

Y. M. And that he has revealed Himself to man?

O. M. By His deeds and works, yes—as we experience them in our persons and see them in Nature. But not in any other way, so far as I know.

Y. M. Not by His Book?

O. M. I think it may be His book, but I have no way of arriving at a certainty about it.

Y. M. The ablest minds in the earth have been certain that it was His book.

O. M. That is an argument, but that is all. It is not evidence.

Y. M. Gladstone, Bismarck, Washington, Lincoln, Shakspeare—

O. M. Henry VIII, Alexander VI, Philip II, Torquemada, Captain Kidd—there are thousands and thousands. It is nothing. It was their training, their heredities, their environment that enabled them to be convinced; and there is not one of them who would not have been as certain of the divine inspiration of the Koran if he had been a Turk by descent and surroundings. The fact that the greatest minds in the earth have been convinced, as you say, is merely argument, nothing more—and it is straining a compliment to dignify it to even that degree.

Y. M. It is an argument which has no weight at all with you?

O. M. None at all. A conviction of theirs drawn from established facts—like certain established facts of astronomy, chemistry and so on—would have weight with me—convincing weight. But here they have nothing solid, nothing substantial, nothing trustworthy to go upon.

Y. M. Are the internal evidences of the Book itself nothing?

O. M. Those “evidences,” as you call them, have a good deal of weight with me. They go far toward persuading me that it is His book. His character, as portrayed in the Old Testament and in many passages of the New satisfactorily answers to His character as revealed in his conduct as exhibited to us daily.

[begin page 478]

Y. M. That is true! His goodness, his love, his compassion, his—

O. M. I was not thinking of those traits. He may have them. It is possible. One cannot tell.

Y. M. This is strange talk. He is all goodness, love, compassion.

O. M. Could you mention some instances?

Y. M. A million.

O. M. A couple will answer. Even one will do.

Y. M. He gave us our life. He—

O. M. Wait. We must not slur these benevolences over, and take them for granted. It is but fair that we examine them first. He made us. The day we are born he begins to persecute us. Even our littleness, our innocence, our helplessness cannot move him to any pity, any gentleness. Day after day, week after week, month after month, the wanton tortures go on. Pain, pain, pain—in the teeth, in the stomach, in the bowels; disease follows disease: measles, croup, whooping cough, mumps, colic, scarlet fever, ague, tonsilitis, dipththeria—there is no end to the list. Would you treat a little child so, that had done you no harm? How do you reconcile the infliction of these undeserved miseries with those traits which you have so confidently claimed for the inventor of them—goodness, love, compassion? What is the object of it? what is the explanation of it? what is the excuse for it? the pretext?

Y. M. We are not permitted to pry into these sacred mysteries. We must be satisfied with knowing that they are for our good—our discipline.

O. M. The pulpit itself could not furnish a more luminous answer. They are to discipline us? Would you discipline an offending or an unoffending child with dipththeria—your child?—or even your enemy's?

Y. M. Of course I wouldn't, but—

O. M. God the compassionate would? What is the discipline for?

Y. M. A preparation for the struggle of life.

O. M. Light, as from the pulpit again! The child dies. What becomes of that explanation now? Did God know beforehand that the child would die?

Y. M. From the beginning of time.

O. M. Then why did he discipline it for a struggle which was not to take place?

[begin page 479]

Y. M. We cannot know.

O. M. Hasn't it the aspect of entirely gratuitous cruelty? But let us go on. The child becomes a youth, the youth an adult, the adult old. Disease harries him all the way to the grave. He has diseases of his nails, of his bones, of his blood, of his skin, of his heart, his liver, his teeth, his lungs, his brain, his entrails. There is not a fibre in him anywhere which has not been especially and ingeniously designed to harbor a disease of its own and propagate pain and misery. He is the house and home of billions of germs and microbes whose sole office is to manufacture tortures for him. Is it not plain insanity to recognize in this exhibition the hand of goodness, love, compassion? How do you account for these horrors? Is it some more discipline?

Y. M. Yes—partly; and partly the man brings them upon himself by transgressing the laws of nature.

O. M. Who made the laws of nature?

Y. M. God.

O. M. And He made man?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Made him with the ability to transgress the laws?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. And the disposition to do it?

Y. M. Yes, he has the disposition.

O. M. Designed the trap, then designed the victim with a disposition to go into it. When slave-hunters play such tricks upon their fellow men the pulpit calls them bitter hard names. Must you praise in a Deity what you execrate in a slave-hunter? It is not logic.

Y. M. Man brings all his punishments upon himself through wilful and wicked transgression of the laws of nature.

O. M. But he inherits some of his diseases from his forbears—the liquor habit, insanity, and such things, and cannot help himself.

Y. M. Well, his forbears committed the transgressions.

O. M. Am I to be hanged because my grandfather was a murderer?

Y. M. It is written that the sins of the fathers shall be answered for by their posterity generations afterward.

O. M. Is there some way to explain or justify this more-than-tigerish spirit, this age-long unappeasable appetite for the blood and misery of the innocent?

[begin page 480]

Y. M. I cannot explain it, I can only justify it.

O. M. How?

Y. M. By the knowledge that it is right and cannot be wrong, since it proceeds from the Source of all justice.

O. M. Is it from that Source that we get our own ideas of right and justice?

Y. M. Yes. From that Source, and from it alone, for there is no other.

O. M. We are but indifferent learners, then, for we do not pursue with our malice generation after generation of the innocent. Neither we nor the tigers. We seem to be better than our Teacher. Are the Savior and God one Person, or two?

Y. M. One. He is God.

O. M. Did he say we must forgive an offender seventy times seven times?

Y. M. He did.

O. M. And is it he, also, who pursues his offender down through generations of his innocent posterity?

Y. M. It is not to be denied. But His ways are not our ways. He may righteously do things which would be sin in us.

O. M. There must be something divine in us; for we, too, teach by example—when it is handy; and by precept when it isn't. You think we bring all our sufferings upon ourselves—except in infancy and in the matter of inherited disease—by transgressing the laws of nature. Sometimes an earthquake cripples a hundred people for life and breaks the hearts of a hundred more by killing their wives, parents, children, friends; cyclones and tidal waves do the same. Is there any transgression of the laws here?

Y. M. The killed and injured had transgressed certain laws, the bereft survivors also. All were punished.

O. M. Do the earthquakes and cyclones pick out the guilty and leave the innocent unharmed?

Y. M. Undoubtedly. Except in the case of innocent people. whose ancestors had sinned.

O. M. The lightning kills people. Does the lightning discriminate, too?

Y. M. We may be sure of it.

O. M. Does it spare the holy?

[begin page 481]

Y. M. There can be no doubt of it.

O. M. It destroys churches with much frequency. And statues of saints—statues which have been spared three hundred years. The accounts of heaven seem to remain open a good while.

Y. M. A thousand years are to Him as a day.

O. M. That is unfortunate for us. Was it He that issued the command “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you?”

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. And that we must forgive the transgressor seventy times seven?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. And that persecutes little children with boils and colics and pains and miseries for transgressions committed by their great-grandfathers?

Y. M. His ways are not as our ways.

O. M. Let us be proud of it. It is He that requires us to forgive seventy times seven, and observe the Golden Rule. Is it He also who sends offenders into a lake of fire and brimstone to roast there throughout eternity?

Y. M. His ways are not as our ways.

O. M. For that let us rejoice. Did He create all things?

Y. M. All.

O. M. Including Satan?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. And has condemned him to torment by fire forever?

Y. M. Yes. And justly; for Satan wrought evil in the earth and was disobedient.

O. M. Did He foresee that Satan would act so, and that He would burn him forever?

Y. M. He knew it when He created Satan.

O. M. Then necessarily He made himself responsible for Satan's crime. Why punish Satan for it instead of Himself, the guilty party?

Y. M. Satan could have obeyed, and did not do it.

O. M. And that was foreknown?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. In that case we arrive where we were before: God was responsible for Satan's crime, just as He is unquestionably responsible [begin page 482] for every foreknown or unforeknown crime committed by man, his creature. We poor worms and weevils do not claim to be very just and fair, yet if a man sees a blind child walking toward a precipice and does not save him—even by force, if necessary—we hold the man guilty of the child's death if it follow. Do you believe that God sends unbaptised children to eternal torture by fire?

Y. M. I do not merely believe it, I know it. All Christians know it, and they solemnly state it when they enter upon Church membership.

O. M. Have you friends who have children in hell?

Y. M. Yes, several.

O. M. How long have the children been there?

Y. M. Some as many as thirty years.

O. M. Have the parents gone mad?

Y. M. No.

O. M. What saves them from it?

Y. M. I do not know. Doubtless, faith in His inexhaustible loving-kindness.

O. M. As exhibited in burning the children. Do they still respect Him?

Y. M. It is a blasphemous phrase. They more than respect Him, they adore Him, they worship Him.

O. M. They are easily pleased. It is said that Lazarus looked down from heaven and saw Dives in hell. Will those parents look down and see their children burning?

Y. M. Yes, without a doubt.

O. M. Will it make heaven a hell for them?

Y. M. No. It will increase the joys of heaven for them—as Baxter of the “Saint's Rest” has pointed out.

O. M. For what reason?

Y. M. Because it is by God's will and pleasure that they burn. To the right-hearted Christian whatever is in accordance with the will and pleasure of God, fills his own heart with joy and thanksgiving.

O. M. What is the difference between a right-hearted Christian and a fiend—if any?

Y. M. This is gross blasphemy, and I will not answer you.

O. M. Perhaps it would trouble you to find an answer. Let us put it in another form. The right-hearted Christian sees his unoffending [begin page 483] child broiling on the red-hot grates of hell, and proclaims from the housetops that the Author of this unspeakable atrocity is made up all of goodness, mercy and loving-kindness: what is the difference between a right-hearted Christian and an idiot—if any?

Y. M. I will not answer such brutal questions.

O. M. You would find it difficult, no doubt. If you should find an offending cat—or an unoffending cat—shut up in a hot stove and shrieking with pain, what would you do?

Y. M. Release her, of course.

O. M. By your own admission you are better than God. Better, kinder, gentler, more humane, more to be respected, honored, esteemed. And most men are like you; let us take credit to ourselves for it. Shall I tell you why the Christian parent can joyfully laugh in the daytime and peacefully sleep nights, during thirty years, while his unfriended child is wailing in the fires of hell all that time? It is because the Christian does not believe it—in his heart; but only with his head. The heart could not bear that burden. It would break.

Y. M. He may not realize it, still it is so.

O. M. I think you must be right. It reflects the remorseless character of God as betrayed in His daily deeds. For each small hour of happiness granted to us here he charges us two hours of unhappiness— usually collectable immediately; when we die we have paid the full bill, with usury; but that is nothing, He sends the most of us to hell anyway. He is a hard master.

Y. M. He gives us many, many happinesses; and He never gives us pain except by our own fault or for our own good.

O. M. The happinesses seem to be traps, and to have no other intent. He beguiles us into welding our heart to another heart—the heart of a child, perhaps—the years go by, and when at last that companionship has become utterly precious, utterly indispensable, He tears the hearts apart, He kills the child. Sleep comes upon us and in it we forget our disaster. In the morning we wake; we are confused; we seem to have had a bad dream. Then suddenly full consciousness comes, and we know! All the happiness that could be crowded into a lifetime could not compensate the bitterness of that one moment. And thenceforth the rest of our years are merely a burden. This is to discipline us? Is that your idea?

Y. M. Yes. It is to draw us nearer to Him; it is to wean us from [begin page 484] fleeting and foolish earthly loves and make us seek and cling to the only precious love, the divine love.

O. M. It seems to betray a rare misapprehension of human nature and a large absence of tact and judgment. To my mind it is a cruel procedure.

Y. M. It might be cruel if that were to be the end; but it is not. What we suffer here will be made up to us by an eternity of bliss in heaven—bliss perfect, bliss absolute.

O. M. What is your idea about the lower animals? Are they going to heaven?

Y. M. Certainly not. It is written that they perish.

O. M. Upon each and every one of them God practices relentless cruelties. He appoints a parasite to attach itself to the eyes of certain fishes, cover them up and blind them. The fish cannot see its food, cannot find it; it goes about in the misery of hunger days and weeks, and is finally released from its cruel existence by starvation and death. The fish is not being educated for heaven, since it is not to go there. Why is it disciplined? What are the undeserved tortures for?

Y. M. We cannot know, but God knows. They are for a good and loving purpose.

O. M. We are privileged to doubt it. Each creature in the earth is commissioned to inflict pain and death upon some other creature; and another creature is commissioned to inflict pain and death upon it. There is not one creature, big or little, in the earth, that has not come into it specially commissioned to a career of persecution, mutilation and murder. Creatures detectible only under the most powerful microscopes are found to make their living by torturing and killing each other.

Y. M. There is nothing unjust about it. It is their nature. They are made so.

O. M. Who made them so?

Y. M. God.

O. M. Why?

Y. M. It pleased Him to do it.

O. M. Would it have pleased you to do it?

Y. M. I am not God.

O. M. In providing tortures for the animal world—that world [begin page 485] denied the compensations of heaven—all the ingenuities of a malicious spirit have been exhausted. In New Zealand there is a harmless caterpillar whose creased back catches dust; the winds bring to this dust the seed of a certain weed appointed from on high to see that the caterpillar shall suffer long misery and final assassination; the roots of the seed strike down into his body, the weed grows and flourishes, sucking up the life-juices of the worm for its nourishment; in time the caterpillar is empty and dry, and death—the only really valuable boon vouchsafed to any of God's creatures—comes to its relief. To man has been appointed the fruits of the earth to live upon; and to each and every fruit of whatever kind, has been assigned a destroyer—insect, bug, locust, weevil or what not—to every plant a destroyer, an enemy to ruin the crop and rob the laborer. An all-powerful Being could have furnished these creatures with an appetite for sand. Why, do you suppose, did He not do it?

Y. M. He had his reasons. It is not for us to criticise.

O. M. They were founded in love, no doubt.

Y. M. Our Father who art—

O. M. Don't misuse that title. Leave that to the pulpit. Earthly fathers do not torture and harry and burn children—for discipline's sake or any other. Shall there be no honorable title among us sacred from the slanders of the pulpit? God is not a father in any kindly sense. The Book attributed to Him shows it, all Nature shouts it. Plainly if he cares for his creatures it is not in a spirit of love. It seems strange that he should care for them, or even think of them. Strangest of all that He should value men's flatteries. I cannot conceive of myself caring for the compliments of the wiggling cholera-germs concealed in a drop of putrid water. I cannot conceive of myself caring whether they appointed microbe-popes and priests to beslaver me with praises or didn't. I cannot conceive of myself being “jealous” about whether they mouthed and twaddled at me or didn't. I cannot conceive of myself reducing myself to invisibility and going down into the drop of water to beget myself on a microbe, and be re-born as a microbe, reared as a microbe, crucified as a microbe—suffering such small momentary pain as the evanescent microbe is capable of feeling—and all this foolishness to “save” the microbe species for the rest of time from the consequences of some inconsequential offence committed against [begin page 486] me in the hoary antiquity of week before last—it is wholly impossible to conceive it. I should not care for the microbes nor their praise; I should not care for their sins, and should not trouble myself to keep an account of them; I should not care whether the microbes were saved or damned—particularly the former. As compared with such a prodigy as God, I am less than the billionth fraction of a microbe. Why should He interest Himself about me? Do you think he does?

Y. M. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His notice. You have said, yourself, that He has invented a million tortures wherewith to make your life unhappy.

O. M. True. But he could invent the tortures and set in motion the laws and the machinery which should continue them through all time without his supervision, then turn His attention elsewhere and trouble Himself no further about the matter. I cannot imagine His being interested during even the half of one of his thousand-year days with the monotonous repetition, generation after generation, of man's trivial doings—his squabblings, his wars, his cheatings, swindlings, oppressions, his petty joys, his paltry heroisms, his griefs and pains and heart-breaks, his insulted hopes, his rickety old age, his longings for death, his despised worship, his affronted prayers, his foolish religions, his silly governments, his toy kings that made so great noise yesterday and will die to-day and stink to-morrow—no variety in the bill, never a new device to freshen up the inane monotony of it all—why, surely even God himself would die of the boredom of it and the threadbare poverty of it, if He did not at brief intervals leave the auditorium and hunt up some kind of rational amusement.

Y. M. Notwithstanding your opinion we are precious in His eyes, the proof of it is in His Book. He will gather to Himself at the Resurrection such as have deserved His forgiveness, and noble and satisfying will be their reward.

O. M. Why should He wish to make a collection of this riff-raff?

Y. M. Man is not riff-raff. Man—

O. M. We very well know what Man is. Man hides himself from himself during most hours of the day, and in books and sermons and speeches calls himself by fine names; but there is one hour in the twenty-four when he does not do that.

Y. M. What hour is that?

[begin page 487]

O. M. It is when he wakes out of sleep, deep in the night. You know the bitterness of that hour; we all know it. The black thoughts come flocking through our brain, they show us our naked soul, our true soul, and we perceive and confess that we are despicable.

Y. M. Those thoughts are messengers sent from Satan. We have only to pray; they cannot abide where prayer is.

O. M. Why should Satan trouble himself about us? What reason has he to be interested in us?

Y. M. Every reason. He is a malignant spirit, and spends all his days in devising ways to trick us into his hell, so that he may feast his appetite for misery by seeing us burn forever.

O. M. In disposition he seems to be the twin of the Other One. Do you detect any difference?

Y. M. God is always trying to save us from hell. But for Satan's machinations He would succeed.

O. M. The fate of every man is foreknown to God before the man's birth? You said that?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Then how can Satan's interference affect the result?

Y. M. Nevertheless we know that he is always trying.

O. M. He cannot capture a soul which was foredoomed to heaven?

Y. M. Indeed, no. It is impossible.

O. M. And could not keep out a soul foredoomed to hell even if he tried?

Y. M. Of course not.

O. M. It seems to me that Satan's is the most unprofitable trade I have yet heard of. Nothing ever comes of his efforts. How do you suppose he has managed to get such a large reputation for capacity and efficiency?

Y. M. It is not for me to say.

O. M. It looks as if the pulpit gave it him. It is always advertising his business gratis, and making a great to-do over it, yet when you bring the pulpit to book its own testimony shows that he hasn't any trade to advertise. Plainly the pulpit itself has the easiest trade going. It can talk any insanities it pleases and get people like you to listen. Do you really believe that God is all-powerful?

[begin page 488]

Y. M. I do.

O. M. And do you believe that He would really like to see all men saved?

Y. M. I know it.

O. M. Then why doesn't He save them?

Y. M. He cannot save the disobedient.

O. M. Is His all-powerful power limited, then?

Y. M. By principle, yes. He cannot break his own decrees.

O. M. He could annul the decrees?

Y. M. Of course.

O. M. That would save the human race from a frightful fate. Why, do you suppose, doesn't He do it?

Y. M. It would not be right.

O. M. No, only cheaply charitable. I suppose you would do it if you could?

Y. M. But I am not God.

O. M. You paid yourself that compliment before. You have objected to the term “riff-raff” as applied to Man. I cannot see why. In the moral qualities he is infinitely inferior to the other animals, and—

Y. M. Wait—how do you make that out?

O. M. I told you a while ago. It is very simple. Man is cruel, malignant, vengeful. He inflicts pain for the mere love of it. Consider the strange and dreadful tortures which the North American Indians used to inflict upon their prisoners of war; consider how the Tartars used to seat a prisoner of war upon pointed stakes and hold him there hour after hour while the man's weight made the stake slowly penetrate the man's body and finally kill him; consider the rich variety of horrible and long-drawn-out tortures which the Christian priests of Spain—with the approval of the Pope—invented and applied to their victims in the shambles of their Holy Inquisition. The other animals kill, but only in sudden passion in the rutting season or for food—never in cold revenge. Have you anything to offer against that statement?

Y. M. Go on.

O. M. Man hunts down the other animals and slaughters them by hundreds, for mere pleasure—“sport” he calls it. The rich aristocracies of Europe turn great tracts of land into game preserves, and breed deer and birds to furnish this sport for them, and Parliaments [begin page 489] protect their ghastly privileges with rigorous laws. A rich European noble has written with pride and satisfaction of how, in one day, on our Great Plains, he and his party of friends rode into a herd of buffaloes and killed seventy-one of them and left them on the ground to rot. Neither the tiger nor any other “beast” kills more than it needs for a single meal, nor ever kills for sport. Have you anything to offer against that statement?

Y. M. Go on.

O. M. Man is avaricious. He will grind his workmen to the bone till he has acquired millions more than he can spend, and will still go on grinding and oppressing to acquire more. Rich men have not scrupled to cheat the poor and the ignorant, the widow and the orphan in order to add to their riches. Misers have half starved themselves to save their savings. Among the beasts there are no misers, none that is avaricious.

Y. M. Not all men are avaricious.

O. M. No beast is.

Y. M. Go on.

O. M. Men keep harems, but it is by brute force privileged by odious laws which the other sex was allowed no hand in making. The rooster keeps a harem, but it is by consent of his concubines.

Y. M. Proceed.

O. M. Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity—these are strictly confined to Man. Among the other animals there is no trace of them. Like Adam when he had an unsoiled mind, they hide nothing and are not ashamed.

Y. M. Go on.

O. M. Man is the inventor and sole practicer of the atrocity of atrocities, War. He gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out, as the Hessians did in our Revolution, and as the boyish Prince Napoleon did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. He is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country—takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him.

Y. M. Continue.

[begin page 490]

O. M. Man is the only animal that enslaves his own kind.

Y. M. Except the ant.

O. M. Except the ant. Man is the only religious animal. He has the Only True Religion—several thousand varieties of it, and all of them rich with “internal evidences” of having been conceived and worked out by Supreme Beings who had lost their minds. He is the only animal who loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology is not straight. He has made a grave-yard of the earth in trying to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.

Y. M. Not all religions have done this.

O. M. I was thinking of the Christian religion particularly.

Y. M. For shame! It is the very symbol of peace, the introducer and promoter of peace.

O. M. The peace of God, perhaps, of which it has been justly remarked that it passeth understanding. Why, God himself said, at a time when topics like loving your enemies, and forgiving seventy times seven, and turning the other cheek were taking a rest, that He came into the world not to bring peace but a sword. However, to return to the subject: you think Man is not riff-raff. I cannot bring myself to agree with you. He has all the immoral qualities, the miscalled “lower” animals have none of them.

Y. M. Man has no one to blame but himself. Adam was created morally perfect, as morally blemishless as the angels themselves. Before the Fall, which he brought upon himself and his posterity by disobedience, he was incapable of sin, for he was without the knowledge of good and evil—he did not know them apart.

O. M. Then he was entirely satisfactory to God?

Y. M. Entirely.

O. M. And fit for heaven.

Y. M. Yes, fit for heaven.

O. M. Do the “lower” animals know good from evil?

Y. M. No.

O. M. And yet are ruled out of heaven?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Why?

Y. M. It is by God's commandment.

O. M. It seems unfair; and inconsistent. Being ignorant of good [begin page 491] and evil and incapable of sin, they stand on a par with the angels. Why are they ruled out and the angels admitted?

Y. M. It is by the command of God, whose wisdom is without bounds and whose justice is perfect.

O. M. God did not wish Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and find out the difference between good and evil and how to commit sin?

Y. M. He did not. He commanded them to refrain.

O. M. He knew they would disobey?

Y. M. Yes. He knew that they would be tempted by the serpent and that they would yield.

O. M. He could have prevented the serpent from tempting them?

Y. M. Certainly.

O. M. He could have cut the tree down or removed it to a safe place in heaven?

Y. M. All things are possible with God.

O. M. Except square dealing, apparently. And common consistency. He knew beforehand that Adam would yield to temptation. Then where could have been the use in experimenting upon a sure thing? It looks as if he did not feel certain.

Y. M. He was certain.

O. M. He created a weak Adam when He could have created a strong one, then laid a trap for him which He foreknew he would fall into. Then He punished him when He was solely responsible for Adam's crime Himself. I think He did well to teach people to pray to Him not to lead them into temptation. Apparently He knows His own disposition. Isn't it a sorry business, this whole tangle of childish nonsense? Why was He so indiscreet as to reveal the fact that He knew everything that was going to happen in the world before He created it? It is a constantly recurring and insurmountable obstacle—it blocks His scheme at every turn. It makes prayer mere waste of breath; it is useless to pray against a foreknown and foreordained thing.

Y. M. Contrite and sincere prayer can move Him to change it.

O. M. Then it isn't a foreknown thing.

Y. M. Yes it is; for it was foreknown that the prayer would change it.

[begin page 492]

O. M. Then it wasn't a foreordained thing.

Y. M. Yes it was. It was foreordained that the prayer should be made and the thing be thereby changed.

O. M. This forces upon us the fact that it was foreknown that for a million years the entire population of the earth would be without the Word; that without the knowledge of the Word not a man of them all would escape hell; that for 2,000 years after the Word was sent mighty populations in Asia and in the islands of the sea would still be without it and be pouring into hell year by year in countless multitudes. This colossal injustice and cruelty, which is in exact and striking harmony with the cruelties daily practiced upon all living creatures in the form of diseases, pains, hunger, cold, persecutions and mutilations, and upon man in the additional miseries of mental cares and distresses, and griefs of the heart, make a belief in hell—which is doubted by some who cannot reason from the myriad eloquent facts placed before their eyes—a thing entirely rational and worthy of adoption. The spirit that could invent such horrors, and without repenting continue them age after age, can be almost surely depended upon to furnish something as bad or worse in the hereafter, and can also be depended upon to furnish nothing that shall resemble a heaven—even the unendurable one pictured in the Book. That one offers nothing that could attract an intelligent person. In the Book no premium is anywhere placed upon intelligence, talent, mental superiority, is there?

Y. M. No. God cares nothing for those things, His heaven is for moral worth alone.

O. M. Yet He rules out the only creatures that are in any reasonable degree eligible—the so-called “lower” animals.

Y. M. They have not the Moral Sense.

O. M. When Adam was perfect he hadn't it. And only then was he satisfactory. It is doubtful if you have located the Source of all mercy, goodness and compassion aright, but there seems to be no real question as to where the Source of all inconsistency is to be found.

WRITTEN around 1901–1902; paper from one of the tablets (possibly “Par Value”) Mark Twain often used after returning to America [begin page 493] in 1900, but never before then. At top left of the first leaf he wrote “Character”; at the end of the manuscript he wrote “Read this” followed by “Aguinaldo” as a heading for a résumé or quotation but at that point abandoned the manuscript. In 1901–1902 he wrote or began several attacks on American policy in the Philippines, and he believed Emilio Aguinaldo, the Philippine guerrilla leader, was in a class with Joan of Arc. His marginal comments on Edwin Wildman's pro-American Aguinaldo (Boston: Lothrop, 1901—copy in MTP) are as violent as any he wrote.

O. M. Please write down these two laws: 1. The disposition that is born in a man determines what the man shall at bottom be; and by no possibility can that disposition ever be actually altered, for either better or worse.

2. Training and circumstances can Seem to alter it by suppressing its expression and suspending its activities, but that is all.

Y. M. I have set them down.

O. M. Do you clearly understand that in those two brief laws is compacted all the materials that go to the building of the character of a man? You think you do? Then prove it. Name, in two words, the sole materials out of which the character of a human being is built.

Y. M. Disposition and Circumstances.

O. M. That is correct. Into the word Circumstances is condensed everything called Training, Teaching, Education, etc.; for all these things are direct results of Circumstance—that is to say, Accident —for a man cannot create his circumstances, he is merely their slave and plaything. They cannot be ordered, they cannot be commanded.

Y. M. Is Circumstance so powerful?

O. M. It is all-powerful. The man's birth-place is an Accident; his sex is an Accident; his disposition is an Accident; his place in the social scale is an Accident; he is king by Accident, beggar by Accident; Chinaman by Accident, American by Accident; Pagan by Accident, Christian by Accident; Presbyterian, Baptist or Catholic by Accident; free by Accident, slave by Accident, royalist by Accident, democrat by Accident; honest by Accident, a thief by Accident; every circumstance of his life is an Accident and an educator, and is the child of a previous Accident and the father of a posterity of them. Life is one long linked tape-worm of Accidents.

[begin page 494]

Y. M. If it is all Accident and Circumstance, where does Disposition come in, and what office does it perform?

O. M. Its function is of formidable importance, for it selects from the flying myriad of Circumstances the ones which its appetite and tastes prefer, and out of these it builds its man's character.

Y. M. If it can select, that is commanding; then how is life merely Accident and a chain of Accidents?

O. M. Disposition does not make the Accident it selects, it only chooses between two or more Accidents.

Y. M. And then?

O. M. The Circumstance which it selects breeds other Circumstances immediately and infallibly; and the Disposition goes on selecting.

Y. M. For instance?

O. M. Given the Accident of a shipwrecked party flung ashore in a strange city. Disposition and previous training at once assert themselves. With a hundred kinds of environment to choose from, A selects the thieves' quarter and makes friends there—and a certain sort of Circumstances will certainly follow, one breeding another and that one in its turn breeding others; good influences will fall in A's way every day and every night, but his Disposition will be indifferent to them or antagonistic to them and they will have little effect or none; A goes straight on his preferential course through the flocking Circumstances, selecting as he goes—and by and by he will arrive at the grave, by way of jail, poor-house, and possibly gallows. On the other hand, with the same large variety of Circumstances to choose from, B's disposition and previous training will make him choose the higher and better sort, and he will move straight along this road, selecting as he goes, and his life will be vastly different from A's. But both lives will be based upon Disposition and moulded and ordered by Accident—that is to say, Circumstances. Read this:

PAINE dated the manuscript 1905, but the paper seems to be from a “Par Value” tablet, which Mark Twain is not known to have used [begin page 495] after 1904. The placement of the lines across the short dimension of the leaves also argues against 1905, though no date more specific than 1901–1904 is possible.

Old Man. How would you define it?

Young Man. Moral courage is that great quality which enables a person to stand up for the right, at cost of popularity, caste, esteem,—sometimes at cost of fortune, liberty, or life.

O. M. Let us change it to “for the right as he sees it.” That will be better, I think. He can't always be sure he is right and everybody else wrong. Is moral courage a rare quality?

Y. M. Yes. So rare that its few possessors are always conspicuous.

O. M. You can name instances?

Y. M. The two or three men who began the anti-slavery crusade seventy years ago. Great moral courage was required for that. They lived in a storm of vituperation; they were hated, despised, shunned; the whole nation cursed them, not six pulpits in the Union ventured to defend them.

O. M. It is a good instance. Name another.

Y. M. Susan B. Anthony standing up for the rights of her sex against the contempt and slander and ribaldry of the entire nation, male and female.

O. M. Another good instance. Joshua Giddings and Susan B. Anthony would have championed any and all moral causes?

Y. M. Yes. I can conceive of none that they would have been afraid to do battle for. Their moral courage was limitless.

O. M. You are sure that moral courage is scarce. How scarce?

Y. M. I am convinced that not more than one person in half a million possesses it.

O. M. What is moral courage—a talent, or an acquisition?

Y. M. A talent, of course. It is born in a man, else he is without it.

O. M. Like a talent for mathematics, languages, billiards, poetry, and so on?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Can a man have a talent for mathematics and none for poetry, languages and billiards?

Y. M. Certainly.

[begin page 496]

O. M. Can a man have a talent for poetry and none for mathematics, languages and billiards?

Y. M. Of course.

O. M. When a man has a considerable talent in one direction isn't it usual for him to be only ordinarily equipped with the other talents?

Y. M. Yes, it is.

O. M. Are all fine billiard players gifted in equal degree?

Y. M. Oh, no. There are millions of fine players, but in talent they vary from each other by shades.

O. M. Some are world-renowned?

Y. M. Yes—five or six in a generation.

O. M. We do not hear of the rest of the million?

Y. M. The world doesn't. Their reputations are local. Some have a reputation in their city, some in their club, some in their village.

O. M. The same with poets, mathematicians, linguists and the rest?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Then there are degrees in the several talents?

Y. M. Certainly. It goes without saying.

O. M. You say moral courage is a talent?

Y. M. Yes, a talent.

O. M. Yet you say only one person in half a million possesses it?

Y. M. Well—it seems to be a talent apart; a most rare, most extraordinary talent. One can hardly subject it to the rules that govern the others.

O. M. Let us leave the upper regions—let us leave the Giddingses and Anthonys and come to down to the common herd. You have spoken of an aunt of yours who was afraid of the dark, afraid of cows, afraid of the lightning, afraid to sleep in a room alone, afraid of ghosts—in fact was the joke of the village for her numberless timidities —yet was not afraid to face a mob of lynchers, all alone, and cry shame upon them, and denounce the leaders by name, although she knew she would be ostracised by the community for it. She did this brave thing on two occasions. Did she do battle for woman's rights also?

Y. M. She? Oh, no.

O. M. Did she believe in that movement?

[begin page 497]

Y. M. Privately—yes. But it was unpopular in the village, and she would not have been known in it for the world.

O. M. Did she favor other moral causes?

Y. M. Yes, she favored all moral causes, from principle, but not enough to work publicly for them unless they were popular.

O. M. She had a splendid and aggressive moral courage, but it was limited to lynchings?

Y. M. Yes, that is about it.

O. M. Take the cases of Smith, Jones, Brown, Robinson. You and I know them well. They are average men, obscure men, private men, altogether unknown to prominence—average men, that is the right phrase. They well represent the multitude. I think we may say that what they are the world is. These four are always to be found on the right side of every good cause—the right side according to their lights. They are always there, aren't they?

Y. M. Yes, it is true.

O. M. How do we know it?

Y. M. By talking with them.

O. M. Right. They are there privately. Not publicly, but privately. Isn't it so?

Y. M. Yes, it is.

O. M. Two of them are Republicans, privately, and democrats at the polls and in mixed company; in their circle they are afraid to be otherwise. The other two are democrats in private and republicans at the polls. They are all Christians in public and unbelievers in private. When President McKinley put the Declaration of Independence under his feet and sent General Merrit Merritt to the Phillipines with a pirate's commission in his pocket all four were indignant, along with the rest of the nation; eight months later—cowed by noise, nick-names and insult, they tucked their tails between their legs and became “patriots,” along with the rest of the nation. I have suggested that these four tipify Christendom—I mean all Christendom. Have they moral courage?

Y. M. They are destitute of it.

O. M. No, they are not. Smith, a poor man and unknown, bought one share of H. H. railway stock twenty years ago, in order that he might be privileged to attend the annual meeting of the company [begin page 498] and expose its legislature-bribings and the deliberate swindles whereby it cheats the State out of its constitutional share of the annual profits; and every year, for twenty years, he has stood up there, without hope or possibility of accomplishing anything, and read off his carefully prepared and unanswerable statistics, and endured the jeers and laughter of the stock-holders for an hour, and the derision, next day, of all the newspapers in the State. There isn't an upright man—editor or other—in Connecticut, but admires Smith's virtue and moral courage in private and makes cowardly fun of it in public. In one detail, then, Smith has this talent which you think is so rare, hasn't he?

Y. M. He has. It is not to be denied.

O. M. Take Jones. Forty-nine men in fifty have little or no respect for the missionary industry—privately; but they prudently contribute to it, Sundays, when the plate goes around. Jones publicly states his belief that the Golden Rule distinctly forbids the missionary to ply his trade in China or in any other country whose people he would be unwilling to allow to go to his American home and undermine the religious faith of his family. For this, Jones is disliked in his church and is often made to feel very uncomfortable. There are two thousand newspapers and other periodicals in the United States. Do you hear of any of them opposing or deriding the foreign missionary industry?

Y. M. No.

O. M. Do you hear speakers oppose or deride it in public gatherings, or talkers attack it in drawing-rooms.

Y. M. Most certainly not.

O. M. Yet it has but a small popularity, and even that little is only sentimental.

Y. M. How—sentimental?

O. M. The kind that approves with the mouth—and keeps its hand in its pocket. Three millions of persons, in two New England States, give 75 cents apiece a year to the foreign missionary cause, and seventy-three millions of people in forty-three States give 3½ cents apiece.

Y. M. Are those the proportions?

O. M. Yes. Yet my statistics are wrong, in one way. Broadly speaking, living people care nothing for the missionary cause, it is only the dead ones. It is a cause that lives on bequests—gets a friend's money after he is done with it. If it had to subsist on the money it gets [begin page 499] from the living, it would starve to death in three months. It is a business which pretends to be of vast public importance and interest, whereas the nation cares nothing about it. No other trade in the world, flourishing on insincere sentiment and false appearances is so wide open to ridicule, yet no one dares to ridicule it. It is the chiefest of all the protected industries.

THE script is across the long dimension of leaves from a “Pratt's Greater New York Tablet” or similar product the author used in the period 1905–1910. As John S. Tuckey has noted (Mark Twain and Little Satan West Lafayette, Ind., 1963, p. 68), such placement was characteristic only of works written on such paper in 1905. Yet Mark Twain wrote the fragment before transposing the first two chapters in his printer's copy. At the head of the manuscript he wrote that it was to precede or follow the “first chapter,” but the nature of the fragment shows he meant present chapter 2. He tore the leaves in half, but all of them survive and are easily assembled.

Old Man. You have at some time or other been in a cold storage vault?

Young Man. Yes.

O. M. You retain a strong impression of your first visit to such a place?

Y. M. Very strong, very vivid.

O. M. Just the mention of the words themselves—cold storage—revives that impression?

Y. M. Unquestionably. I feel the frosty chill again.

O. M. First visit to a Turkish bath. You had sensations, and remember them?

Y. M. Indeed yes. Nobody forgets them.

O. M. Those two words—Turkish bath—do they recal a sensation and produce an effect?

Y. M. Yes. When I hear them I am immediately swallowed up in a fog of white steam and I sit naked and gasping for breath while rivers of boiling perspiration pour down my back.

[begin page 500]

O. M. Valuable words!—turkish bath and cold storage. They carry no confusion to one's mind. How about the words Borrowing and Stealing: do they mean one thing, or two, to you.

Y. M. Two.

O. M. To say that a man borrowed a horse—does that lower the man in your estimation?

Y. M. Certainly not.

O. M. To say that he stole a horse—that lowers him?

Y. M. Decidedly, yes.

O. M. Valuable words!—borrow and steal. They carry no confusion to the mind. Is that true?

Y. M. Yes.

O. M. Not quite—no, not quite. There is a kind of stealing which is a disease of the mind, not a defect of morals, hence no guilt attaches to its practice.

Y. M. Ah, I remember. Kleptomania.

O. M. And so, to be fair, and avoid confusion, we give two definitions to the word thief. A Kleptomaniac is a thief, but we do not call him thief, because it would mislead. The hearer would despise him. But if we call him Kleptomaniac the hearer does not despise him, he only pities him. Is that true?

Y. M. Yes, and just.

O. M. Now we arrive at that troublesome word Selfishness.

Y. M. I believed I divined your drift.

O. M. All acts are selfish, but they are distinctly divisible into good selfishnesses and evil ones—selfishnesses which are innocent of harmful intent, and selfishnesses which can hurt. Yet we have but the one word; it makes no discrimination, and it always carries with it a reproach. It is as wrong as it would be to have but one word for theft, and include Kleptomania in it, thus putting a stain upon the Kleptomaniac which he does not deserve.

Y. M. I am far enough along, now, to realize that it certainly is an overloaded word—a word with two functions to perform, but shirks one of them entirely—a word which often conveys a slander where none is deserved. Cannot you throw it wholly out, and put something more light-throwing and discriminative in its place?

O. M. I have been thinking of that. When we examine the sole impulse which moves the human machinery we find that in all cases [begin page 501] it has one function—one, and only one—to content the spirit, whether for a single moment or for a longer time. Nothing but self-approval can content the spirit and give it peace—peace for the moment or peace for a longer time. In most cases the source of this self-approval is the approval of others; in many cases a part of its source is the disapproval of others: as where a vicious man gets pleasure out of beating his wife and terrorizing his children, and gets an added pleasure out of the impotent disapproval of timid and outraged neighbors; and as where Tweed got joy and contentment out of robbing the city and an added pleasure out of the people's impotent cursings—which he answered with the jeering remark, “What are you going to do about it?” Do you follow?

Y. M. Yes—go on.

O. M. Now, then, no man invents his own impulses. They are the product wholly of his born-temperament, acted upon by his training and by the influences of his environment. Therefore, we do not want an accusing word, like Selfishness; we do not want a word which indicates personal initiative, there being no such thing; and finally we do not want a word implying merit or demerit in the man, or praise or blame, no such words being applicable to him, he being purely a machine and as destitute of initiative and of control over his movements as is any other machine. I think we want a word which will confine itself strictly to indicating the quality of a man's acts, and their results, upon himself and upon others, but attributing neither praise nor blame to the man himself for the acts and the results.

Y. M. I see. You want a colorless word.

O. M. Exactly. For instance: when we say the lunar influence affects the tides we are neither praising the moon nor censuring her; and we are neither praising nor blaming the sun when we say the solar influence affects the weather.

Y. M. I get the idea. Why not abolish the word Selfishness and put Lunar and Solar in its place?

O. M. They might answer.

Y. M. The moon is lovely and beautiful, to all men, both savage and civilized. She gets pleasure out of shining—one always feels sure of that. Her shining gives pleasure and profit to all upon whom her beneficent light falls. There you have the act, also the double result. Then adopt the word. Say of a man “he has many lunar impulses; the acts [begin page 502] proceeding from them have as a result that they bless and profit him and do the same for others.” It describes the nature of the impulse but in no way claims that the man originated it; it merely mentions the acts proceeding from the impulse, without connecting him with the acts, but only connecting the acts with the impulse—which he did not originate; it describes the result, but imputes no merit to the man for it.

O. M. I think Lunar will do.

Y. M. So will Solar. The sun gets up infamous weather sometimes—hurricanes in summer, blizzards in winter. We can say of a man, “he has many solar impulses; he does not originate them, nor, consequently, the acts proceeding from them; the results of the acts are bad for him and for others, but he is not to blame for this, for he is merely a machine and is operated wholly by outside forces like any other machine.”

O. M. Solar will do. The word Selfishness is now formally abolished from the vocabulary of this philosophy. Let us try the new words. Here are a couple of paragraphs—one from the narrative of an American lady traveling in England, the other an occurrence in King Leopold's Congo State:

“The young Englishman, moved by the child's troubles, made advances, got its confidence, and was soon busy repairing the toy, the child looking on, grateful and happy, its tears gone, its eyes eloquent with interest and delight. I could have hugged that young fellow.”

Do you see? He couldn't bear to see the child suffer, it gave him pain—gave him pain. He had to come to the rescue, to get peace of mind, freedom from pain, contentment of spirit. Contentment of spirit is derived from one source, and only one. What is it?

Y. M. Self-approval.

O. M. And self-approval is derived from—how many sources?

Y. M. Two: results proceeding from lunar impulses and acts, and those that proceed from solar impulses and acts.

O. M. Good! It goes very well. The young man was moved by—what?

Y. M. A lunar impulse. The result of the consequent act was a satisfaction to him, first, and to the child next.

O. M. True. This is the other passage:

“The prisoner's child cried, because of its broken wrist; this woke the soldier and enraged him, and he caught up the child and dashed its [begin page 503] brains out against a tree and flung the corpse at the feet of its agonised mother.”

The soldier was moved by a solar impulse. He was born with a cruel disposition; brutal companionships and a savage environment had trained him, and we have the result: he could get more satisfaction and self-approval out of giving rein to his bloody passions than he could have gotten out of restraining them, therefore he did as described. But he was not to blame for his impulse or his act; both were compulsions of his disposition and his training. The young Englishman is entitled to no praise for his impulse and its resulting act: they were compulsions of his temperament and training. Some day we will read over the chapter upon Selfishness, and use, in the place of that unfair word, Self-Approval; and use Lunar and Solar to describe the two kinds of impulse whereby self-approval is acquired. Maybe this will give the chapter a different and pleasanter aspect, and purge it of offence.