What Is Man? E-Book

Mark Twain

• Herausgeber: Mark Twain
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

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 seen such multitudes of excited and struggling people. It took a good half-hour to pack them and pair them into the train—and it was the longest train we have yet seen in Europe. Nuremberg had been witnessing this sort of experience a couple of times a day for about two weeks. It gives one an impressive sense of the magnitude of this biennial pilgrimage. For a pilgrimage is what it is. The devotees come from the very ends of the earth to worship their prophet in his own Kaaba in his own Mecca.

Leseprobe

Mark Twain

What Is Man?

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Table of contents

WHAT IS MAN?

THE DEATH OF JEAN

THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE

HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK

THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION

A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY

SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY

AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT

ON GIRLS

A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET

AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY

CONCERNING TOBACCO

THE BEE

TAMING THE BICYCLE

IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?

WHAT IS MAN?

Ia. 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 merely a machine, and nothing more. The Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his reasons for his position.]Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.O.M. Where are these found?Y.M. In the rocks.O.M. In a pure state?Y.M. No—in ores.O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?Y.M. No—it is the patient work of countless ages.O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that?Y.M. No—substantially nothing.O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed?Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore; crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine several metals of which brass is made.O.M. Then?Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.O.M. You would require much of this one?Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a word all the cunning machines of a great factory?Y.M. It could.O.M. What could the stone engine do?Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly—nothing more, perhaps.O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?Y.M. Yes.O.M. But not the stone one?Y.M. No.O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the stone one?Y.M. Of course.O.M. Personal merits?Y.M. Personal merits? How do you mean?O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own performance?Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.O.M. Why not?Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the law of construction. It is not a merit that it does the things which it is set to do—it can't help doing them.O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does so little?Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its make permits and compels it to do. There is nothing personal about it; it cannot choose. In this process of "working up to the matter" is it your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are about the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the performance of either?O.M. Yes—but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? Shall we call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage and the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the stuff of which the steel one was built—but along with a lot of sulphur and stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old geologic ages—prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove. Will you take note of that phrase?Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; "Prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove." Go on.O.M. Prejudices must be removed by outside influences or not at all. Put that down.Y.M. Very well; "Must be removed by outside influences or not at all." Go on.O.M. The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock. To make it more exact, the iron's absolute