Mark Twain, “On The Damned Human Race”

 

 “On The Damned Human Race”

 by 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.

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. 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) I
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 were 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.

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 man’s slave for wages and does that man’s 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.

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 incapable of performing any other function.
It could never have 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) 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 smirch-less innocence, till we have reached the
bottom stage of development (namable as the Human Being). Below us,
nothing.”