What Is Man? and Other Essays

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What Is Man? — I
a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit \The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had asserted that the human being is…
What Is Man? — II (1)
Man’s Sole Impulse—the Securing of His Own Approval Old Man. There have been instances of it—you think? Young Man. Instances? Millions of t…
What Is Man? — II (2)
“I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the thin…
What Is Man? — III
Instances in Point Old Man. Have you given thought to the Gospel of Self—Approval since we talked? Young Man. I have. O.M. It was I that mo…
What Is Man? — IV (1)
Training Young Man. You keep using that word—training. By it do you particularly mean— Old Man. Study, instruction, lectures, sermons? That…
What Is Man? — IV (2)
O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride’s sake, a p…
What Is Man? — V
More About the Machine Note.—When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to colleges and museums while one human being is…
After an Interval of Days
O.M. Now, dreams—but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any thi…
Instinct and Thought (1)
VI Instinct and Thought (1) Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a while ago—concerning the rat and all that—…
Instinct and Thought (2)
O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple truth—and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from wro…
Instinct and Thought (3)
O.M. Who manufactures them, then? Y.M. God. O.M. Where does the credit of it belong? Y.M. To God. O.M. And the glory of which you spoke, an…
The Death of Jean (1)
The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24, 1909. Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him,…
The Death of Jean (2)
At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to one of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could s…
The Turning-Point of My Life — I
If I understand the idea, the Bazar invites several of us to write upon the above text. It means the change in my life’s course which intro…
How to Make History Dates Stick (1)
These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words large enough to command respect. In the hope that you are listening, and…
How to Make History Dates Stick (2)
This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have a look at the first House of Commons in English history. It was a monumental even…
The Memorable Assassination
Note.—The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva, September 10, 1898, occurred during Mark Twain’s Austrian residence. The news…
A Scrap of Curious History
Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Missouri—a village; time, 1845. La Bourboule-les-Bains, France—a village; time, the…
Interlaken, Switzerland, 1891 (1)
It is a good many years since I was in Switzerland last. In that remote time there was only one ladder railway in the country. That state o…
Interlaken, Switzerland, 1891 (2)
“Of course you did. You were young and confident and thought you could branch out and make things go with a whirl, and here you are, you se…
Bayreuth, Aug. 2d, 1891 (1)
It was at Nuremberg that we struck the inundation of music-mad strangers that was rolling down upon Bayreuth. It had been long since we had…
Bayreuth, Aug. 2d, 1891 (2)
It is doubtless a fact that a prince is a permanent interest, an interest not subject to deterioration. The general who was never defeated,…
William Dean Howells
Is it true that the sun of a man’s mentality touches noon at forty and then begins to wane toward setting? Doctor Osler is charged with say…
In the appendix to Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson one finds this anecdote: (1)
Cato’s Soliloquy.—One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat to him (Dr. Samuel Johnson) Cato’s Soliloquy, which she went through ver…
In the appendix to Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson one finds this anecdote: (2)
And here she rises once more and untimely. There should be a limit to public-school instruction; it cannot be wise or well to let the young…
A Simplified Alphabet
(This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last writing done by Mark Twain on any impersonal subject.) I have had a ki…
As Concerns Interpreting the Deity — I
This line of hieroglyphs was for fourteen years the despair of all the scholars who labored over the mysteries of the Rosetta stone: (Figur…
Concerning Tobacco
(Written about 1893; not before published) As concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. And the chiefest is this—that there is a stan…
The Bee
It was Maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee. I mean, in the psychical and in the poetical way. I had had a business introduction earlie…
Taming the Bicycle
(Written about 1893; not before published) In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old high-wheel bicycles of that peri…
(from My Autobiography) — I
(from My Autobiography) (from My Autobiography) — I Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which constitute…
(from My Autobiography) — II · (from My Autobiography) — III
(from My Autobiography) — II When I was a Sunday-school scholar, something more than sixty years ago, I became interested in Satan, and wan…
Facts
He was born on the 23d of April, 1564. Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could not sign their names. At Str…
Conjectures
IV Conjectures The historians “suppose” that Shakespeare attended the Free School in Stratford from the time he was seven years old till he…
IV — V
“WE MAY ASSUME” In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the Sh…
IV — VI
When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to him as author had been before the London world and in high favor f…
IV — VII
If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would place b…
Shakespeare as a Lawyer (1)
VIII Shakespeare as a Lawyer (1) The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their author not only had a very extensive a…
Shakespeare as a Lawyer (2)
Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from Lord Penzance’s book as to the suggestion that Shakespeare had somehow or other ma…
VIII — IX
Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare’s Works? Nobody knows. We cannot say we know a thing when that thing has not been proved. Know is too s…
The Rest of the Equipment
X The Rest of the Equipment The author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination,…
X — XI · Irreverence
X — XI Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare’s Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be so…
XII — XIII
Isn’t it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all the celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear back to…