The Lowest Animal Analysis

One sunny morning in Cleveland, Ohio, a homeless man receives a gift of new shoes from an honorable stranger. Yet at the same time, a young man robs a bank, and an innocent woman is shot at random. Humanity has positive aspects, such as people doing righteous acts towards other human beings, but also sadly has negative aspects such as violence for little to no reason. The world seems to withhold more negative events rather than positive all throughout history. Therefore, mankind is inherently evil, but also has the capability to overcome through positivity.

Mankind tends to react to most situations balefully. According to Mark Twain’s The Lowest Animal, “man is the cruel animal (text 5).” For instance, consider the time when man “shuts
There are also myriad examples showing the positivity in human nature. On the contrary, this may be due to taught values in society. One may argue that selfless actions done for other human beings show how humans may be inherently good. An example of an action corresponding to this theme would be an opposing softball team witnessing a girl who stuck a home-run collapse with a knee injury, but instead of leaving her there they brought her around all the bases, sacrificing their victory. The girls on the opposing team say sweet comments such as: “We just wanted to help her (text 4.)” and the girl with the knee injury says how she “would do the same for her in the same situation (text 4.)” One may think that kindness is an inherent property of humans or rather that society just teaches us how helping other human beings is the correct action to take in an event. Without a society to teach man what is morally right, man would want to do what is right for themselves so they can feel satisfied with themselves. Correspondingly, one may argue that “in most cases people will not do things to harm themselves or others (text 2)” therefore proving to be inherently good. Although this may be somewhat true, there is still a lot of violence that is present, even in today’s society. People’s inner evils may be at a chance of increasing due to the others around them acting hostile, therefore reverting their mindsets to their original nature. As explained in Hobbes’ work Leviathan, man “acts morally only when they are sure that others are the same (text 6,)” explaining how morals are put into thought only when others use them. Without the confidence that one is using morals, it is said that humans’ “rational behaviour leads [them] to attack others (text 6,)” which exhibits to how people may not do things to harm others when morals are present, but act more violent when morals are