Evil: Mark Twain and Higher Animals
From The Damned Human Race by Mark Twain
Mark Twain is a central figure in American literature. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, his finest work, is the story of a journey down the Mississippi by two memorable figures, a white boy and a black slave. Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 and was raised in Hannibal,
Missouri. During his early years, he worked as a riverboat pilot, newspaper reporter, printer, and gold prospector. Although his popular image is as the author of such comic works as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
Life on the Mississippi, and The Prince and the Pauper, Twain had a darker side that may have resulted from the bitter experiences of his life: financial failure and the deaths of his wife and daughter.
His last writings are savage, satiric, and pessimistic. The following selection is taken from Letters from the Earth, one of his last works. It has been under the title The Damned Human Race and has been printed in numerous essay anthologies.
Did today’s newspaper feature headlines about people fighting somewhere in the world (Iraq,
Afghanistan, Africa)? Most likely, it did. In the following selection, Mark Twain concludes that the combative and cruel nature of human beings makes them the lowest of creatures, not the highest. With scathing irony, he supplies a startling reason for humans’ warlike nature.
The Damned Human Race
Mark Twain
I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used
Mark Twain is a central figure in American literature. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, his finest work, is the story of a journey down the Mississippi by two memorable figures, a white boy and a black slave. Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 and was raised in Hannibal,
Missouri. During his early years, he worked as a riverboat pilot, newspaper reporter, printer, and gold prospector. Although his popular image is as the author of such comic works as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
Life on the Mississippi, and The Prince and the Pauper, Twain had a darker side that may have resulted from the bitter experiences of his life: financial failure and the deaths of his wife and daughter.
His last writings are savage, satiric, and pessimistic. The following selection is taken from Letters from the Earth, one of his last works. It has been under the title The Damned Human Race and has been printed in numerous essay anthologies.
Did today’s newspaper feature headlines about people fighting somewhere in the world (Iraq,
Afghanistan, Africa)? Most likely, it did. In the following selection, Mark Twain concludes that the combative and cruel nature of human beings makes them the lowest of creatures, not the highest. With scathing irony, he supplies a startling reason for humans’ warlike nature.
The Damned Human Race
Mark Twain
I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used