Between Us and Among Us
None but gods have ever had a thought which did not come from the outside. (Mark Twain, “What Is Man?”)
From Mark Twain’s autobiography, dictated September 4, 1907:
Many a time in the past eight or nine years I have been strongly moved to publish that little book [What Is Man?], but the doubtfulness of the wisdom of doing it has always been a little stronger than the desire to do it, consequently the venture has not been made; necessarily it has not been made, for, according to my own gospel, as set forth in that small book, where there are two desires in a man’s heart he has no choice between the two, but must obey the strongest, there being no such thing as free will in the composition of any human being that ever lived.
I have talked my gospel rather freely in conversation for twenty-five or thirty years, and have never much minded whether my listeners liked it or not, but I couldn’t get beyond that—the idea of actually publishing always brought me a shudder; by anticipation I couldn’t bear the reproaches which would assail me from a public which had been trained from the cradle along opposite lines of thought, and for that reason—which is a quite sufficient reason—would not be able to understand me. I had early proved all this, for I laid one chapter of my gospel before the Monday Evening Club in Hartford, a quarter of a century ago, and there was not a man there who didn’t scoff at it, jeer at it, revile at it, and call it a lie—a thousand times a lie! That was the chapter denying that there is any such thing as personal merit; maintaining that a man is merely a machine automatically functioned without any of his help, or any occasion or necessity for his help, and that no machine is entitled to praise for any of its acts of a virtuous sort, nor blamable for any of its acts of the opposite sort. Incidentally, I observed that the human machine gets all its inspirations from the outside, and is not capable of originating an idea of any kind in its own head . . .
The Club handled me without gloves. They said I was trying to strip man of his dignity, and I said I shouldn’t succeed, for it would not be possible to strip him of a quality which he did not possess. They said that if this insane doctrine of mine were accepted by the world life would no longer be worth living; but I said that that would merely leave life in the condition it was before. . . .
The following is the Preface to “What Is Man?”
February, 1905. The studies for these papers were begun twenty-five or twenty-seven years ago. The papers were written seven years ago. I have examined them once or twice per year since and found them satisfactory. I have just examined them again, and am still satisfied that they speak the truth.
Every thought in them has been thought (and accepted as unassailable truth) by millions upon millions of men—and concealed, kept private. Why did they not speak out? Because they dreaded (and could not bear) the disapproval of the people around them. Why have I not published? The same reason has restrained me, I think. I can find no other. . . .
It would not surprise me to suddenly know that millions upon millions of people have privately—and sustainedly throughout some portion of their lives—believed that humans lack free will. But it would surprise me to suddenly know that any one of those millions had managed to operationalize that belief in their own life, in any way. How could they? What could ‘acting out’ that belief look like? We imagine everyone dropping their hammers, upon hearing the news that they no longer have free will, and flocking to the beach or killing themselves or others—but this would only show that knowledge has an effect on people; it could not demonstrate, as such, that ‘free will’ has anything to do with it.
There is, for starters, a truth of the matter—to the extent that ‘free will’ is a coherent, investigable concept, that is—regardless whether we believe it: we’ve either got it or we don’t. And if we don’t have it today, it stands to reason we didn’t have it yesterday either, back when things were . . . pretty much the same. More importantly, though—much more—is that a sudden and wild change in behavior, globally, in response to the ‘gospel’ of no free will would only go to show where ‘free will’ comes from—us. It is something we grant each other; it has a social existence, not an individualized one. This is where the fear and indignation come from in the reaction: you know what some people will do with that information, and you’re getting ready for it.
The phenomena that lie between us and among us are the most beguiling to us. Look there for your dignity.
