Mark Twain on Prophecy

[Bravus]

Short quote from the newly released autobiography of Mark Twain (Sam Clemens):

"...a man who goes around with a prophecy-gun ought never get discouraged: if he will keep up his heart and fire at everything he sees, he is bound to hit something by and by."

[Gail]

Last night we were on our way to the bookstore to buy that book, and at the last minute I decided, Nah...

But I would like to read it still. One can look at life and chuckle :)

[Gail]

I didn't realise that his life had a tragic twist at the end. He had lost his wife and 1 or 2 of his children and on Christmas Eve he said goodnight to his daughter and went to bed. He awoke the next morning to discover that she had died during the night. I can't remember if she was epileptic or what- something like that.

He died just a few weeks later.

[John317]

His autobiography was published a long time ago. Is this a biography or autobiography?

Do you know the title?

Mark Twain was very bitter toward God and toward the whole human race. He literally hated humanity and thought that if there was a God who created the world, He was stupid to make people. He believed God's biggest mistake was to give humans a conscience. He wrote about this in one of his last stories, The Mysterious Stranger. Clemens' greatest sympathy was for Satan.

[Gail]

Hmm.. never knew that!

I believe these are his memoires, previously unpublished. So it would be another autobiography.

[cricket]

Samuel Clemens believed that a good autobiography would be one that was published every 25 years. Each edition ought to reveal a little bit more about the deceased--more that the public would find interesting, and that which was a bit too risque for the earlier editions. He left instructions on what to include in his later editions. And thus, it is still an autobiography, parts of which were previously withheld from the public.

Ever actually read The Mysterious Stranger or The Bible According to Mark Twain? I find them both fascinating reads.

I always have been partial to Samuel Clemens though--he's a Missouri "staple".

[Gail]

Cricket, how far do you live from Hannibal?

[cricket]

It's about a 2 hour drive from here to there.

[Bravus]

Twain was an atheist, so any professed 'sympathy for the Devil' would have been part of his satire, not his actual view. We certainly won't agree with him in all points, but I disagree that he hated humanity: you don't put that much energy into humorously satirising the worst aspects of humanity unless your goal is to protect the best.

Whether we like it or not, there is much about religious behaviour that is ripe for satire.

And, so far, no-one has looked at the content of the actual quote. Of course, it couldn't possibly apply to *us*, but do we see people spraying fire from their 'prophecy guns'around at every topical incident in the hope of evenutally hitting something? I certainly do...

[Gail]

He lived in a time when prophecy was a big topic in America.

[John317]

Twain was an atheist, so any professed 'sympathy for the Devil' would have been part of his satire, not his actual view.

He despised mankind just as Stendhal and Flaubert and some others did. He actually organized a club devoted to spreading his hatred of mankind.

I'm saying what all Twain scholars know and what I learned by studying most of his works in college. I took classes where we studied both his life and his writings. His fictional writings often follow his personal beliefs. For instance, as you read his book, Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, you will see evidence of the change in his point of view of humanity from optimism to one of disdain. At the end of that book, humans are slaughtered like so many ants, and it is really contrary to the way the character begins, with a love for humanity and for doing right. Those were the result of things that were going on in his life at the time he was writing.

[Guest]

I never knew he despised mankind John. And I have read several of his books. In fact I have every book he wrote. I don't read them anymore, but I have them. I wonder what that collection is worth these days?

One of my favorites was "The American Claimant"

[Bravus]

It's worth noting that the 'Connecticut Yankee' character was himself a target of Twain's southern satire, so taking him as a speaker of Twain's own views is literarily perilous...

This is the kind of thing I mean:

Quote:

Misanthropy is usually the result of the conflict between a civilized set of moral values and the realities of the human condition. In most cases, Twain's included, misanthropic outbursts bespeak an ambivalence: the outrage is a result of a deep caring. Twain's crusty diatribes had deep moral and humanitarian roots.

It's from here:

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/twainver.htm

(and yes, I do see that URL)

Like any atheist, and any satirist, we won't agree with him in all points. But IMO we deprive ourselves of valuable insights if we discount anyone with whom we don't find 100% agreement.

[John317]

Twain was an atheist, so any professed 'sympathy for the Devil' would have been part of his satire, not his actual view.

Bravus, check out what is found in the wikipedia on Twain:

Quote:

Although Twain was a Presbyterian, he was sometimes critical of organized religion and certain elements of Christianity through his later life. He wrote, for example, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so", and "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian". Nonetheless, as a mature adult he engaged in religious discussions and attended services, his theology developing as he wrestled with the deaths of loved ones and his own mortality. His own experiences and suffering of his family made him particularly critical of "faith healing", such as espoused by Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science. His more inflammatory work on religion require a nuanced understanding of his theological arguments and criticism.

Twain generally avoided publishing his most heretical opinions on religion in his lifetime, and they are known from essays and stories that were published later. In the essay Three Statements of the Eighties in the 1880s, Twain stated that he believed in an almighty God, but not in any messages, revelations, holy scriptures such as the Bible, Providence, or retribution in the afterlife. He did state that "the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are manifested in His works", but also that "the universe is governed by strict and immutable laws", which determine "small matters" such as who dies in a pestilence. At other times he wrote or spoke in ways that contradicted a strict deist view, for example, plainly professing a belief in Providence. In some later writings in the 1890s, he was less optimistic about the goodness of God, observing that "if our Maker is all-powerful for good or evil, He is not in His right mind". At other times, he conjectured sardonically that perhaps God had created the world with all its tortures for some purpose of His own, but was otherwise indifferent to humanity, which was too petty and insignificant to deserve His attention anyway.

[John317]

Hey, Richard, that is one of his books I have but haven't yet read. Here are some things Twain wrote about humanity:

"There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce."

- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

"Human beings seem to be a poor invention. If they are the noblest works of God where is the ignoblest?"

- Mark Twain, Notebook (1896)

"I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any worse"

- Mark Twain, Concerning the Jews

"Every man is in his own person the whole human race, with not a detail lacking. I am the whole human race without a detail lacking; I have studied the human race with diligence and strong interest all these years in my own person; in myself I find in big or little proportion every quality and every defect that is findable in the mass of the race. I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born; I knew I should not find a single original thought in any philosophy, and I knew I could not furnish one to the world myself, if I had five centuries to invent it in. Nietzsche published his book, and was at once pronounced crazy by the world-by a world which included tens of thousands of bright, sane men who believed exactly as Nietzsche believed but concealed the fact and scoffed at Nietzsche. What a coward every man is! and how surely he will find it out if he will just let other people alone and sit down and examine himself. The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner."

- Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption

"Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."

- Mark Twain, Christian Science

"Doesn't make any difference who we are or what we are, there's always somebody to look down on."

- Mark Twain, 3,000 Years Among the Microbes

"It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong, but no matter, the crowd follows it."

- Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

[John317]

I never knew he despised mankind John. And I have read several of his books.

Here's Twain on "the Damned Human Race":

The Damned Human Race

By Mr. 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 what is com­monly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have sub­jected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result. Thus I verified and established each step of my course in its turn before advancing to the next. These experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens, and covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work.

Before particularizing any of the experiments, I wish to state one or two things which seem to more properly belong in this place than further along. This, in the interest of clearness. The massed experiments established to my satisfaction certain gener­alizations, to wit:

1. That the human race is of one distinct species. It exhibits slight variations in color, stature, mental caliber, and so on due to climate, environment, and so forth; but it is a species by itself, and not to be confounded with any other.

2. That the quadrupeds are a distinct family, also. This fam­ily exhibits variations in color, size, food preferences, and so on; but it is a family by itself.

3. That the other families the birds, the fishes, the insects, the reptiles, etc. are more or less distinct, also. They are in the procession. They are links in the chain which stretches down from the higher animals to man at the bottom.

Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl that, and to provide some fresh meat for his larder. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the differ­ence between an anaconda and an earl if any caused seven young calves to be turned into the anaconda’s cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves, and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The fact stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn’t; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn’t. This seemed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a good deal in the transition.

I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter s supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by chicane. In order to bolster up a tottering reputa­tion the ant pretended to store up supplies, but I was not de­ceived. I know the ant. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is avaricious and miserly; they are not.

In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals.

Roosters keep harems, but it is by consent of their concu­bines; therefore no wrong is done. Men keep harems but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws which the other sex was allowed no hand in making. In this matter man occupies a far lower place than the rooster.

Cats are loose in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the cat, has brought the cats looseness with him but has left the unconsciousness behind the saving grace which excuses the cat. The cat is innocent, man is not.

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is The Animal that Laughs. But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No. Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it or has occasion to.

At the head of this article we see how three monks were burnt to death a few days ago, and a prior put to death with atrocious cruelty. Do we inquire into the details? No; or we should find out that the prior was subjected to unprintable muti­lations. Man when he is a North American Indian gouges out his prisoners eyes; when he is King John, with a nephew to render untroublesome, he uses a red-hot iron; when he is a reli­gious zealot dealing with heretics in the Middle Ages, he skins his captive alive and scatters salt on his back; in the first Richards time he shuts up a multitude of Jew families in a tower and sets fire to it; in Columbus’s time he captures a family of Spanish Jews and but that is not printable; in our day in England a man is fined ten shillings for beating his mother nearly to death with a chair, and another man is fined forty shillings for having four pheasant eggs in his possession without being able to satisfacto­rily explain how he got them. Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals. The cat plays with the frightened mouse; but she has this excuse, that she does not know that the mouse is suffering. The cat is moderate, unhumanly moderate: she only scares the mouse, she does not hurt it; she doesn’t dig out its eyes, or tear off its skin, or drive splinters under its nails man-fashion; when she is done playing with it she makes a sudden meal of it and puts it out of its trouble. Man is the Cruel Animal. He is alone in that distinction.

The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that 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.

Man 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. Man has done this in all the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.

Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who en­slaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some mans slave for wages, and does that mans work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy ex­pense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between cam­paigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man with his mouth.

Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Ani­mal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of cen­turies, he was at it in England in Mary’s day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light, he is at it today in Crete as per the telegrams quoted above he will be at it somewhere else tomor­row. The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one.

In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

One is obliged to concede that in true loftiness of character, Man cannot claim to approach even the meanest of the Higher Animals. It is plain that he is constitutionally incapable of ap­proaching that altitude; that he is constitutionally afflicted with a Defect which must make such approach forever impossible, for it is manifest that this defect is permanent in him, indestructible, ineradicable.

I find this Defect to be the Moral Sense. He is the only animal that has it. It is the secret of his degradation. It is the quality which enables him to do wrong. It has no other office. It is in capable of performing any other function. It could never hate been intended to perform any other. Without it, man could do no wrong. He would rise at once to the level of the Higher Animals.

Since the Moral Sense has but the one office, the one capacity to enable man to do wrong it is plainly without value to him. It is as valueless to him as is disease. In fact, it manifestly is a disease. Rabies is bad, but it is not so bad as this disease. Rabies enables a man to do a thing, which he could not do when in a healthy state: kill his neighbor with a poisonous bite. No one is the better man for having rabies: The Moral Sense enables a man to do wrong. It enables him to do wrong in a thousand ways. Rabies is an innocent disease, compared to the Moral Sense. No one, then, can be the better man for having the Moral Sense. What now, do we find the Primal Curse to have been? Plainly what it was in the beginning: the infliction upon man of the Moral Sense; the ability to distinguish good from evil; and with it, necessarily, the ability to do evil; for there can be no evil act without the presence of consciousness of it in the doer of it.

And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirchless innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development namable as the Human Being. Below us nothing.

[Guest]

He makes a good case against Darwinism....

[John317]

He lived in a time when prophecy was a big topic in America.

His life spanned almost exactly the same time period as Ellen White's, being born a few years later than she and dying only 5 years before her.

I wish I knew if he had ever heard of her or what he thought of her, or if he ever had anything to say about the Millerittes. Knowing Twain, I can well imagine they would be the object of his scathing wit.

[John317]

...Like any atheist, and any satirist, we won't agree with him in all points. But IMO we deprive ourselves of valuable insights if we discount anyone with whom we don't find 100% agreement.

I hardly discount him since he is one of my favorite writers and have read most of his works.

But he wasn't an atheist. As the article I posted here shows, he was a Presbyterian most his adult life and he claimed on several occasions to believe in an almighty God. That's a strange thing for an atheist to say.

The article states:

Quote:

In the essay Three Statements of the Eighties in the 1880s, Twain stated that he believed in an almighty God, but not in any messages, revelations, holy scriptures such as the Bible, Providence, or retribution in the afterlife.

Where does Twain say he is an atheist?

[John317]

...I disagree that he [Twain] hated humanity: ...

Perhaps a better way of putting it would be "disdain," and lack of love, for humanity. He thought humanity was foolish and not worthy of being called the high point of God's creation. In the final analysis, for Twain people were "the damned human race."

He came to have the same low regard for God, the creator of humanity. But you are mistaken to say that Twain was an atheist. Twain rejected the Bible's view of God, but he continued to believe in an almighty God, although he believed that that almighty God was pretty foolish.

[JudyJudy]

I took a Mark Twain class in college and loved his style - even tried my hand at imitating it. I never thought him an atheist - just someone who recognized hypocrisy in Christianity, found much to satirize in the Bible, and had deep questions about God as He was being preached in Twain's time.

[John317]

Welcome to the Forum, JudyJudy.

I agree. I found the same thing about Twain.

[aldona]

I took a Mark Twain class in college and loved his style - even tried my hand at imitating it. I never thought him an atheist - just someone who recognized hypocrisy in Christianity, found much to satirize in the Bible, and had deep questions about God as He was being preached in Twain's time.

That's the sense I have had whenever I read Mark Twain. I can understand and share much of his frustrations about the state of "Christianity"/ organized religion.

I suspect a lot of atheists and agnostics are similar. They have high ideals about what a God would be like if He existed, and what His followers should be like, and become bitter and disillusioned when they are confronted by the reality about how the world actually works.

AJ

[John317]

That's the sense I have had whenever I read Mark Twain. I can understand and share much of his frustrations about the state of "Christianity"/ organized religion.

I suspect a lot of atheists and agnostics are similar. They have high ideals about what a God would be like if He existed, and what His followers should be like, and become bitter and disillusioned when they are confronted by the reality about how the world actually works.

But if they know what is right and really have such ideals, they have an obligation to live up to their ideals, not lower them. But in fact, Twain rejected the Bible's view of God. It isn't a valid excuse to reject Christ because Christ's followers aren't all that they should be.

Mark Twain was bitter and disillusion not because of people per se but because of the suffering of his beloved wife and children. Another thing that caused Twain to question the wisdom of God is that he found the human race (himself included) to be foolish and unworthy of a great God's notice.

Twain was not a profound student of the Bible or of the history of Christianity. He had a great talent for writing and literature, and for observing human beings, but he didn't have a good grasp of the Bible or of prophecy.

[Gail]

Now I could be wrong on this, but despite the fact that I find writers such as Twain, Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker very witty and bright, their writing often carry much (as has been noted here) cynicism.

I hesitate to read more than I do of them because I am not sure of what the effect of their cynicism would be on my spiritual life. I am already cynical enough as it is and I don't like it! I don't think it glorifies the Lord.

That could be just me... As one person has more of a weakness for one thing another person might not. But that is one of mine.