What Is Man? and Other Essays quotes

O.M. Yes.

Man the machine—man the impersonal engine.

Whatsoever a man is, is due to his make, and to the influences brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved, directed, commanded, by exterior influences—solely. He originates nothing, not even a thought.

O.M. Yes. Man the machine—man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man is, is due to his make, and to the influences brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved, directed, commanded, by exterior influences—solely.

He originates nothing, not even a thought.

Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are talking is all foolishness?

O.M. Not a shred of it. It grew out of this talk with me. But for that it would not have occurred to you.

No man ever originates anything. All his thoughts, all his impulses, come from the outside.

Y.M. It’s an exasperating subject. The first man had original thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw from.

O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare’s imitations. Shakespeare created nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly portrayed people whom God had created; but he created none himself. Let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying.

Shakespeare could not create. He was a machine, and machines do not create.

Y.M. Where was his excellence, then?

O.M. In this.

He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a Gobelin loom.

The threads and the colors came into him from the outside;

O.M. Personal merit? No. A brave man does not create his bravery. He is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to him.

A baby born with a billion dollars—where is the personal merit in that? A baby born with nothing—where is the personal demerit in that?

The one is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected and despised—where is the sense in it?

O.M.

The impulse to content his own spirit—the necessity of contenting his own spirit and winning its approval.

Y.M. Oh, come, that won’t do!

Thinking of his pain again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn’t relieve the old woman he would not get any sleep. He must buy some sleep—still thinking of himself, you see.

Thus, to sum up, he bought himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night’s sleep—all for twenty-five cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed of itself.

On his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang—profit on top of profit! The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was—first—to content his own spirit; secondly to relieve her sufferings.

she will starve that it may have food; suffer torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a living pleasure in making these sacrifices. She does it for that reward—that self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort.

She would do it for your child IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY.

Y.M. This is an infernal philosophy of yours.

It was an immense act of self-sacrifice (as per the usual definition), for he did not want to do it, and he never would have done it if he could have bought a contented spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost.

But we are so made that we will pay anything for that contentment—even another man’s life.

Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of trained consciences. You mean that we are not born with consciences competent to guide us aright?

O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it:

Conscience—that independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man who is the man’s Master.

There are all kinds of consciences, because there are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin’s conscience in one way, a philanthropist’s in another, a miser’s in another, a burglar’s in still another.

If he leave[s] that road he will find himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems, and whose approval he most values.

He is a chameleon; by the law of his nature he takes the color of his place of resort.

The influences about him create his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his morals, his religion. He creates none of these things for himself. He thinks he does, but that is because he has not examined into the matter. You have seen Presbyterians?

They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment—until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. That was the end of the search.

The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather.

If he was seeking after political Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern men in the earth;

O.M.

Diligently train your ideals upward and still upward toward a summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and the community.

Y.M. Is that a new gospel?

O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes.

They think humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and handsome conduct.

Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man’s doing a good deed for his own sake first-off, instead of first for the good deed’s sake, no man would ever do one.

They must surely be able to notice, and to put things together, and say to themselves, “I get the idea, now: when I do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently I am punished.”

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.

Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that is well up toward man?

O.M. I beg your pardon.

One cannot abolish what does not exist.

Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say there is no such frontier.

And this argument is also applicable in the case of others of the great army of the Unrevealed.

It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

Now as to the ant—

O.M.

Well, don’t tell anybody, and don’t do it again.

Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result—as I understand it—I am required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?

O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple truth—and without uncharitableness.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

It is my belief that this position is not assailable.

It is the same hat, isn’t it? It is in no way altered. But it wasn’t the hat you wanted, but only what it stood for—a something to please and content your spirit. When it failed of that, the whole of its value was gone.

There are no material values; there are only spiritual ones.

You will hunt in vain for a material value that is actual, real—there is no such thing. The only value it possesses, for even a moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and it is at once worthless—like the hat.

Who devised the man’s mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? God devised all these things.

I have not made man a machine, God made him a machine.

I am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more. Is it wrong to call attention to the fact? Is it a crime?

O.M. That is correct.

If a man is born with an unhappy temperament, nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament, nothing can make him unhappy.

Y.M. What—not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs?

They are trying Christian Science, now, with the customary result, the inevitable result. No political or religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man happy. I assure you it is purely a matter of temperament.

Beliefs are acquirements, temperaments are born; beliefs are subject to change, nothing whatever can change temperament.

Y.M. You have instanced extreme temperaments.

The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to learn to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer them.

Nations do not think, they only feel.

They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought—by force of circumstances, not argument—to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised;

[1] Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family for twenty-nine years.

Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart.

In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor and covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural, and as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic:

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother—her incomparable mother!—five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe; and now I have lost Jean.

How poor I am, who was once so rich!

Seven months ago Mr. Rogers died—one of the best friends I ever had, and the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my race; within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan—old, old friends of mine.

Seven months ago Mr. Rogers died—one of the best friends I ever had, and the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my race; within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan—old, old friends of mine.

Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night—and it was forever, we never suspecting it.

She lies there, and I sit here—writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery.

within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan—old, old friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night—and it was forever, we never suspecting it.

She lies there, and I sit here—writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking.

How dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery.

we kissed hands good-by at this door last night—and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here—writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery.

Seventy-four years old twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?

I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.

I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago.

The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.

I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again; that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I have kept to that.

Also with a longing to open up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that splendid enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain.

A person may PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician circumstance steps in and takes the matter off his hands.

At last Circumstance came to my help. It was in this way. Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose a fifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it.

Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis and been obeyed? No, I was the only one.

There were other fools there—shoals and shoals of them—but they were not of my kind. I was the only one of my kind.

Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a partner. Its partner is man’s temperament—his natural disposition.

Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me what to do with it.

Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is the case the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one.

Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be mistaken.

Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom he is an ass yet, and will remain one.

By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them, and reflects afterward.

So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago. In all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade.

I have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; I still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect afterward. Always violently.

When I am reflecting, on those occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think.

I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para.

In New Orleans I inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that there never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman came and asked me what I was doing, and I told him.

He made me move on, and said if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me in.

After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with another turning-point of my life—a new link. On my way down, I had made the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and he consented.

Thus I became at last a member of the literary guild. That was forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever since. Leaving the Rubicon incident away back where it belongs,

I can say with truth that the reason I am in the literary profession is because I had the measles when I was twelve years old.

Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them.

Once General Grant was asked a question about a matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers; he answered the question without any hesitancy.

“General, who planned the march through Georgia?” “The enemy!”

He added that the enemy usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by neglect or through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see your chance and take advantage of it.

Some rare men are wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys.

I am a Waterbury. A Waterbury of that kind, some say.

A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and Circumstance comes and upsets them—or enlarges them. Some patriots throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The PLANS stop there;

Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our temperaments.

I see no great difference between a man and a watch, except that the man is conscious and the watch isn’t, and the man TRIES to plan things and the watch doesn’t.

The watch doesn’t wind itself and doesn’t regulate itself—these things are done exteriorly. Outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left to himself, he wouldn’t get regulated at all, and the sort of time he would keep would not be valuable.

And there was poor Columbus.

He elaborated a deep plan to find a new route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he found a new world.

And he gets the credit of it to this day. He hadn’t anything to do with it.

That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is doing in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating.

They are full of envy and malice, editors are.

This picture will serve to remind you that Edward II. was the first English king who was deposed. Upon demand, he signed his deposition himself.

the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine is a large event, but it has happened several times in history; the murder of a king is a large event, but it has been frequent.

The murder of an empress is the largest of all large events.

One must go back about two thousand years to find an instance to put with this one.

It realizes to us what sorry shows and shadows we are. Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams.

At our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but only candles; and any bummer can blow us out.

And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often forget—or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one way or another all men are mad. Many are mad for money.

It realizes to us what sorry shows and shadows we are.

Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams.

At our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but only candles; and any bummer can blow us out.

All the whole list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions, passions, cares, griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and ready to grow, spread, and consume, when the occasion comes.

There are no healthy minds, and nothing saves any man but accident—the accident of not having his malady put to the supreme test.

One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common, but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every child is pleased at being noticed;

If there is a king who can remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent way, some dozens of times during the past week.

For a king is merely human; the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person; and it is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal way connected with amazing events.

We are all privately vain of such a thing; we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the rest of us are not kings is merely due to another accident;

It was the largest crowd the village had ever seen. The rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought up, in inch samples, for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable event.

Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations.

Within one week afterward four young lightweights in the village proclaimed themselves abolitionists! In life Hardy had not been able to make a convert; everybody laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy.

Such things were happening all over the country. Wild-brained martyrdom was succeeded by uprising and organization. Then, in natural order, followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It was bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way.

It has been the manner of reform since the beginning of the world.

Perhaps the essence of the thing is the value which men attach to a valuable something which has come by luck and not been earned.

A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety-and-nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same way.

A prince picks up grandeur, power, and a permanent holiday and gratis support by a pure accident, the accident of birth, and he stands always before the grieved eye of poverty and obscurity a monumental representative of luck.

As soon as the filling of the house is about complete the standing multitude turn and fix their eyes upon the princely layout and gaze mutely and longingly and adoringly and regretfully like sinners looking into heaven. They become rapt, unconscious, steeped in worship.

There is no spectacle anywhere that is more pathetic than this.

It is worth crossing many oceans to see.

I feel strongly out of place here.

Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.

But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I have never seen anything like this before.

Well, I ought to have recognized the sign—the old, sure sign that has never failed me in matters of art.

Whenever I enjoy anything in art it means that it is mighty poor.

The private knowledge of this fact has saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of many and many a chromo. However, my base instinct does bring me profit sometimes;

There is a plenty of acceptable literature which deals largely in approximations, but it may be likened to a fine landscape seen through the rain; the right word would dismiss the rain, then you would see it better.

It doesn’t rain when Howells is at work.

And where does he get the easy and effortless flow of his speech? and its cadenced and undulating rhythm? and its architectural felicities of construction, its graces of expression, its pemmican quality of compression, and all that? Born to him, no doubt.

I think it is a model of compactness. When I take its materials apart and work them over and put them together in my way, I find I cannot crowd the result back into the same hole, there not being room enough.

I find it a case of a woman packing a man’s trunk: he can get the things out, but he can’t ever get them back again.

The proffered paragraph is a just and fair sample; the rest of the article is as compact as it is; there are no waste words. The sample is just in other ways:

I don’t think I was ever in a street before where quite so many professional ladies, with English surnames, preferred Madam to Mrs. on their door-plates. And the poor old place has such a desperately conscious air of going to the deuce.

Every house seems to wince as you go by, and button itself up to the chin for fear you should find out it had no shirt on—so to speak.

I don’t know what’s the reason, but these material tokens of a social decay afflict me terribly; a tipsy woman isn’t dreadfuler than a haggard old house, that’s once been a home, in a street like this.

For they are unobtrusive, and quiet in their ways, and well conducted.

His is a humor which flows softly all around about and over and through the mesh of the page, pervasive, refreshing, health-giving, and makes no more show and no more noise than does the circulation of the blood.

There is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in Mr. Howells’s books.

The width of the different zones Europe lies in depend upon the surrounding country.

The imports of a country are the things that are paid for, the exports are the things that are not.

Climate lasts all the time and weather only a few days.

The first conscientious Congress met in Philadelphia.

The Constitution of the United States was established to ensure domestic hostility.

Truth crushed to earth will rise again. As follows:

Truth crushed to earth will rise again. As follows:

The Constitution of the United States is that part of the book at the end which nobody reads.

And here she rises once more and untimely. There should be a limit to public-school instruction; it cannot be wise or well to let the young find out everything:

The body is mostly composed of water and about one half is avaricious tissue.

The stomach is a small pear-shaped bone situated in the body.

The gastric juice keeps the bones from creaking.

The stomach is a small pear-shaped bone situated in the body.

The gastric juice keeps the bones from creaking.

The Chyle flows up the middle of the backbone and reaches the heart where it meets the oxygen and is purified.

Some searching questions were asked, when it turned out that these lads were as glib as parrots with the “rules,” but could not reason out a single rule or explain the principle underlying it.

Their memories had been stocked, but not their understandings. It was a case of brickbat culture, pure and simple.

There are several curious “compositions” in the little book, and we must make room for one. It is full of naïveté, brutal truth, and unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy’s composition I think I have ever seen:

All through this little book one detects the signs of a certain probable fact—that a large part of the pupil’s “instruction” consists in cramming him with obscure and wordy “rules” which he does not understand and has no time to understand.

It would be as useful to cram him with brickbats; they would at least stay.

In a town in the interior of New York, a few years ago, a gentleman set forth a mathematical problem and proposed to give a prize to every public-school pupil who should furnish the correct solution of it.

The suggested solutions of this riddle are practically innumerable; they would fill a book.

Thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover the secret of God that our difficulties disappear.

It was always so.

Children of twenty-five, who have seven years of experience, try to tell me what is a good cigar and what isn’t.

Me, who never learned to smoke, but always smoked; me, who came into the world asking for a light.

No one can tell me what is a good cigar—for me. I am the only judge. People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the world. They bring their own cigars when they come to my house.

However, to say true, my tastes are so catholic that

I have never seen any cigars that I really could not smoke, except those that cost a dollar apiece. I have examined those and know that they are made of dog-hair, and not good dog-hair at that.

I have a thoroughly satisfactory time in Europe, for all over the Continent one finds cigars which not even the most hardened newsboys in New York would smoke. I brought cigars with me, the last time; I will not do that any more.

When you point out this miscarriage to him he does not answer your letters; when you call to convince him, the servant prevaricates and you do not get in.

Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.

To be strictly fair, I will concede that now and then one of them will answer your letter, but when they do they avoid the issue—you cannot pin them down.

A bee that has been trained to one of the many and various industries of the concern doesn’t know how to exercise any other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in anything outside of her profession.

She is as human as a cook; and if you should ask the cook to wait on the table, you know what would happen.

Cooks will play the piano if you like, but they draw the line there. In my time I have asked a cook to chop wood, and I know about these things. Even the hired girl has her frontiers;

The bicycle had what is called the “wabbles,” and had them very badly. In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me, and in every instance the thing required was against nature.

Against nature, but not against the laws of nature.

That is to say, that whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and breeding moved me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and unsuspected law of physics required that it be done in just the other way.

It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you’ve got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are.

No—and I see now, plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can’t fall off it and hurt yourself.

There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German is by the bicycling method.

It certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn’t. I don’t know why it isn’t but it isn’t.

Try as you may, you don’t get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire.

You make a spectacle of yourself every time.

There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life—life’s “experiences”—are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how.

I never knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side.

If personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it wouldn’t seem likely that you could trip Methuselah;

Presently he dropped into my wake and followed along behind. A little girl passed by, balancing a wash-board on her head, and giggled, and seemed about to make a remark, but the boy said, rebukingly,

“Let him alone, he’s going to a funeral.”

I have been familiar with that street for years, and had always supposed it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now informed me, to my surprise.

And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a pile. I said, “Hang it! Couldn’t you SEE I was coming?”

“Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn’t tell which WAY you was coming. Nobody could—now, could they? You couldn’t yourself—now, could you? So what could I do?”

There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity to say so. I said I was no doubt as much to blame as he was.

that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true: but I think that the reason he couldn’t run over the dog was because he was trying to.

I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along.

I think it makes a great deal of difference.

I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy out one of these days and run over HIM if he doesn’t reform.

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.

That faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in that ancient day, remains my faith today, and in it I find comfort, solace, peace, and never-failing joy. You see how curiously theological it is.

The “rice Christian” of the Orient goes through the very same steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after him; he goes for rice, and remains to worship.

Ealer did a lot of our “reasoning”—not to say substantially all of it. The slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it by that large name. We others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any name at all.

… and “perhapses,” and “doubtlesses,” and “rumors,” and “guesses,” and “probabilities,” and “likelihoods,” and “we are permitted to thinks,” and “we are warranted in believings,” and “might have beens,” and “could have beens,” and “must have beens,” and “unquestionablys,” and “without a shadow of doubts”—and behold!

Materials? Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare!

Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of Satan. Why?

How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been for me if I had heeded them. But I was young, I was but seven years of age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention.

I wrote the biography, and have never been in a respectable house since.

How curious and interesting is the parallel—as far as poverty of biographical details is concerned—between Satan and Shakespeare.

How sublime is their position, and how over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme—the two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities!

They are the best-known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.

For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those details of Shakespeare’s history which are facts—verified facts, established facts, undisputed facts.

the wife who had had to borrow forty-one shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of the prosperous husband, but died at last with the money still lacking. No, even this wife was remembered in Shakespeare’s will.

He left her that “second-best bed.”

And not another thing; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood with.

The will mentioned not a play, not a poem, not an unfinished literary work, not a scrap of manuscript of any kind.

Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has died this poor; the others all left literary remains behind.

Also a book. Maybe two.

If Shakespeare had owned a dog—but we need not go into that: we know he would have mentioned it in his will. If a good dog, Susanna would have got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a dower interest in it.

I wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business way.

He signed the will in three places.

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare: Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones And curst be he yt moves my bones.

He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture.

We have only circumstantial evidence. Internal evidence.

Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged Dictionary to hold them.

He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris.

In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites and the Baconians, and I am the other one—the Brontosaurian.

Wait half an hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and let them cipher and assume. The mouse is missing: the question to be decided is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts beforehand.

One verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as certainly say the mouse is in the tom-cat.

The Shakespearite will Reason like this—(that is not my word, it is his). He will say the kitten may have been attending school when nobody was noticing; therefore we are warranted in assuming that it did so;

Why did not the inquirer hunt them up and interview them? Wasn’t it worth while? Wasn’t the matter of sufficient consequence?

Had the inquirer an engagement to see a dog-fight and couldn’t spare the time?

It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and manager.

cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master’s whistle.... Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi’ the main course.... Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses. Off to sea again; lay her off.

That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change.

If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say, “Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the imposing-stone into the hell-box;

and so whenever Bret Harte introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte got the phrasing by listening—like Shakespeare—I mean the Stratford one—not by experience.

No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse.

I have been a surface miner—gold—and I know all its mysteries, and the dialect that belongs with them; and whenever Harte introduces that industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that neither he nor they have ever served that trade.

Was there any doubt as to who made that mighty trail? Were there a dozen claimants? Where there two? No—the people knew who it was that had been along there: there was only one Hercules.

There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn’t be two; certainly there couldn’t be two at the same time.

It takes ages to bring forth a Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. This one was not matched before his time; nor during his time; and hasn’t been matched since. The prospect of matching him in our time is not bright.

There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn’t be two; certainly there couldn’t be two at the same time.

It takes ages to bring forth a Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him.

This one was not matched before his time; nor during his time; and hasn’t been matched since. The prospect of matching him in our time is not bright.

and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud.

The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one.

I wouldn’t be a thug, not even if—but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than a thug, is the merit mine? No, it is His.

The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn’t be a thug, not even if—but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides.

If I am better than a thug, is the merit mine? No, it is His. Then to Him be the praise.

That is the right spirit.

The second three of the Baconian six were “presumably” spent by the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher.

That is, the thugs presume it—on no evidence of any kind.

Which is their way, when they want a historical fact. Fact and presumption are, for business purposes, all the same to them. They know the difference, but they also know how to blink it.

The second three of the Baconian six were “presumably” spent by the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the thugs presume it—on no evidence of any kind. Which is their way, when they want a historical fact.

Fact and presumption are, for business purposes, all the same to them.

They know the difference, but they also know how to blink it. They know, too, that while in history-building a fact is better than a presumption, it doesn’t take a presumption long to bloom into a fact when they have the handling of it.

… each and every one of the mental gifts and each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any other man of his time or of any previous time.

He was a genius without a mate, a prodigy not matable.

There was only one of him; the planet could not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have written anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could have written this:

It will give him a shock.

You never notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is until you bite into a layer of it in a pie.

Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare’s Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be so soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly seventy-four years?

and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares and the Author Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys.

We get them all at second hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves.

It is the way we are made. It is the way we are all made, and we can’t help it, we can’t change it.

Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare’s Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for?

Would I be so soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly seventy-four years?

It would grieve me to know that any one could think so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me.

… have been furnished a fetish, and have been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion.

In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash.

Whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it.

I haven’t any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process.

It took several thousand years to convince our fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such thing as a witch;

it has taken several thousand years to convince the same fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such person as Satan; it has taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant Church’s program of post-mortem entertainments;

and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch.

We are The Reasoning Race.

We can’t prove it by the above examples, and we can’t prove it by the miraculous “histories” built by those Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, …

It is detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. I am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it.

I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except towards the things which were sacred to other people.

Am I in the right? I think so. But I ask no one to take my unsupported word; no, look at the dictionary; let the dictionary decide. Here is the definition:

for by the simple process of spelling his deities with capitals the Hindu confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus making it clearly compulsory upon us to revere his gods and his sacred things, and nobody’s else.

We can’t say a word, for he has our own dictionary at his back, and its decision is final.

This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is sacred to the Christian must be held in reverence by everybody else; 2. whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence by everybody else; 3.