Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  Has this experience taught the pulpit anything? It has not. When the Boer prayers achieved victory—as the Boers believed—the Boers were confirmed once more in their trust in the power of prayer. When a crushing finality of defeat overwhelmed them, later, in the face of their confident supplications, their attitude was not altered, nor their confidence in the righteousness and intelligence of God impaired.

  Often we see a mother who has been despoiled, little by little, of everything she held dear in life but a sole remaining dying child; we have seen her, I say, kneeling by its bed and pouring out from a breaking heart beseechings to God for mercy that would get glad and instant answer from any man who had the power to save that child,—yet no such prayer has ever moved a God to pity. Has that mother been convinced? Sometimes—but only for a little while. She was merely a human being, and like the rest—ready to pray again in the next emergency; ready to believe again that she would be heard.

  We know that the real God, the Supreme God, the actual Maker of the universe, made everything that is in it. We know that He made all the creatures, from the microbe and the brontosaur down to man and the monkey, and that he knew what would happen to each and every one of them, from the beginning of time to the end of it. In the case of each creature, big or little, He made it an unchanging law that that creature should suffer wanton and unnecessary pains and miseries every day of its life—that by that law these pains and miseries could not be avoided by any diplomacy exercisable by the creature; that its way, from birth to death, should be beset by traps, pitfalls, and gins, ingeniously planned and ingeniously concealed; and that by another law every transgression of a law of Nature, either ignorantly or wittingly committed, should in every instance be visited by a punishment ten-thousandfold out of proportion to the transgression. We stand astonished at the all-comprehensive malice which could patiently descend to the contriving of elaborate tortures for the meanest and pitifulest of the countless kinds of creatures that were to inhabit the earth. The spider was so contrived that she would not eat grass, but must catch flies, and such things, and inflict a slow and horrible death upon them, unaware that her turn would come next. The wasp was so contrived that he also would decline grass and stab the spider, not conferring upon her a swift and merciful death, but merely half paralysing her, then ramming her down into the wasp den, there to live and suffer for days, while the wasp babies should chew her legs off at their leisure. In turn, there was a murderer provided for the wasp, and another murderer for the wasp’s murderer, and so on throughout the whole scheme of living creatures in the earth. There isn’t one of them that was not designed and appointed to inflict misery and murder on some fellow creature and suffer the same, in turn, from some other murderous fellow creature. In flying into the web the fly is merely guilty of an indiscretion—not a breach of any law—yet the fly’s punishment is ten-thousandfold out of proportion to that little indiscretion.

  The ten-thousandfold law of punishment is rigorously enforced against every creature, man included. The debt, whether made innocently or guiltily, is promptly collected by Nature—and in this world, without waiting for the ten-billionfold additional penalty appointed—in the case of man—for collection in the next.

  This system of atrocious punishments for somethings and nothings begins upon the helpless baby on its first day in the world, and never ceases until its last one. Is there a father who would persecute his baby with unearned colics and the unearned miseries of teething, and follow these with mumps, measles, scarlet fever, and the hundred other persecutions appointed for the unoffending creature? And then follow these, from youth to the grave, with a multitude of ten-thousandfold punishments for laws broken either by intention or indiscretion? With a fine sarcasm, we ennoble God with the title of Father—yet we know quite well that we should hang His style of father wherever we might catch him.

  The pulpit’s explanation of, and apology for, these crimes, is pathetically destitute of ingenuity. It says they are committed for the benefit of the sufferer. They are to discipline him, purify him, elevate him, train him for the society of the Deity and the angels—send him up sanctified with cancers, tumors, smallpox, and the rest of the educational plant; whereas the pulpit knows that it is stultifying itself, if it knows anything at all. It knows that if this kind of discipline is wise and salutary, we are insane not to adopt it ourselves and apply it to our children.

  Does the pulpit really believe that we can improve a purifying and elevating breed of culture invented by the Almighty? It seems to me that if the pulpit honestly believed what it is preaching, in this regard, it would recommend every father to imitate the Almighty’s methods.

  When the pulpit has succeeded in persuading its congregation that this system has been really wisely and mercifully contrived by the Almighty to discipline and purify and elevate His children whom He so loves, the pulpit judiciously closes its mouth. It doesn’t venture further, and explain why these same crimes and cruelties are inflicted upon the higher animals—the alligators, the tigers, and the rest. It even proclaims that the beasts perish—meaning that their sorrowful life begins and ends here; that they go no further; that there is no heaven for them; that neither God nor the angels, nor the redeemed, desire their society on the other side. It puts the pulpit in a comical situation, because in spite of all its ingenuities of explanation and apology it convicts its God of being a wanton and pitiless tyrant in the case of the unoffending beasts. At any rate, and beyond cavil or argument, by its silence it condemns Him irrevocably as a malignant master, after having persuaded the congregation that He is constructed entirely out of compassion, righteousness, and all-pervading love. The pulpit doesn’t know how to reconcile these grotesque contradictions, and it doesn’t try.

  In His destitution of one and all of the qualities which could grace a God and invite respect for Him, and reverence, and worship, the real God, the genuine God, the Maker of the mighty universe, is just like all the other gods in the list. He proves, every day, that He takes no interest in man, nor in the other animals, further than to torture them, slay them, and get out of this pastime such entertainment as it may afford—and do what He can not to get weary of the eternal and changeless monotony of it.

  Monday, June 25, 1906

  Only hearsay evidence that there is to be a heaven hereafter—Christ does not prove that He is God—Takes up the human race—Man a machine, and not responsible for his actions.

  It is to these celestial bandits that the naïve and confiding and illogical human rabbit looks for a heaven of eternal bliss, which is to be his reward for patiently enduring the want and sufferings inflicted upon him here below—unearned sufferings covering terms of two or three years, in some cases; five or ten years in others; thirty, forty, or fifty in others; sixty, seventy, eighty, in others. As usual, where the Deity is Judge, the rewards are vastly out of proportion to the sufferings—and there is no system about the matter anyhow. You do not get any more heaven for suffering eighty years than you get if you die of the measles, at three.

  There is no evidence that there is to be a heaven hereafter. If we should find, somewhere, an ancient book in which a dozen unknown men professed to tell all about a blooming and beautiful tropical paradise secreted in an inaccessible valley in the centre of the eternal icebergs which constitute the Antarctic continent—not claiming that they had seen it themselves, but had acquired an intimate knowledge of it through a revelation from God—no Geographical Society in the earth would take any stock in that book; yet that book would be quite as authentic, quite as trustworthy, quite as valuable, evidence as is the Bible. The Bible is just like it. Its heaven exists solely upon hearsay evidence—evidence furnished by unknown persons; persons who did not prove that they had ever been there.

  If Christ had really been God, He could have proved it, since nothing is impossible with God. He could have proved it to every individual of His own time and of our time, and of all future time. When God wants to prove that the sun and the moon may
be depended upon to do their appointed work every day and every night, He has no difficulty about it. When He wants to prove that man may depend upon finding the constellations in their places every night—although they vanish and seem lost to us every day—He has no difficulty about it. When He wants to prove that the seasons may be depended upon to come and go according to a fixed law, year after year, He has no difficulty about it. Apparently He has desired to prove to us beyond cavil or doubt many millions of things, and He has had no difficulty about proving them all. It is only when He apparently wants to prove a future life to us that His invention fails, and He comes up against a problem which is beyond the reach of His alleged omnipotence. With a message to deliver to men which is of infinitely more importance than all those other messages put together, which He has delivered without difficulty, He can think of no better medium than the poorest of all contrivances—a book. A book written in two languages—to convey a message to a thousand nations—which, in the course of the dragging centuries and eons, must change and change and become finally wholly unintelligible. And even if they remained fixed, like a dead language, it would never be possible to translate the message with perfect clearness into any one of the thousand tongues, at any time.

  According to the hearsay evidence, the character of every conspicuous god is made up of love, justice, compassion, forgiveness, sorrow for all suffering and desire to extinguish it. Opposed to this beautiful character—built wholly upon valueless hearsay evidence—is the absolutely authentic evidence furnished us every day in the year, and verifiable by our eyes and our other senses, that the real character of these gods is destitute of love, mercy, compassion, justice, and other gentle and excellent qualities, and is made up of all imaginable cruelties, persecutions, and injustices. The hearsay character rests upon evidence only—exceedingly doubtful evidence. The real character rests upon proof—proof unassailable.

  Is it logical to expect of gods whose unceasing and unchanging pastime is the malignant persecution of innocent men and animals, that they are going to provide an eternity of bliss, presently, for these very same creatures? If King Leopold II, the Butcher, should proclaim that out of each hundred innocent and unoffending Congo negroes he is going to save one from humiliation, starvation, and assassination, and fetch that one home to Belgium to live with him in his palace and feed at his table, how many people would believe it? Everybody would say “A person’s character is a permanent thing. This act would not be in accordance with that butcher’s character. Leopold’s character is established beyond possibility of change, and it could never occur to him to do this kindly thing.”

  Leopold’s character is established. The character of the conspicuous gods is also established. It is distinctly illogical to suppose that either Leopold of Belgium or the heavenly Leopolds are ever going to think of inviting any fraction of their victims to the royal table and the comforts and conveniences of the regal palace.

  According to hearsay evidence, the conspicuous gods make a pet of one victim in a hundred—select him arbitrarily, without regard to whether he’s any better than the other ninety-nine or not—but damn the ninety-nine through all eternity, without examining into their case. But for one slight defect this would be logical, and would properly reflect the known character of the gods—that defect is the gratuitous and unplausible suggestion that one in a hundred is permitted to pull through. It is not likely that there will be a heaven hereafter. It is exceedingly likely that there will be a hell—and it is nearly dead certain that nobody is going to escape it.

  As to the human race. There are many pretty and winning things about the human race. It is perhaps the poorest of all the inventions of all the gods, but it has never suspected it once. There is nothing prettier than its naïve and complacent appreciation of itself. It comes out frankly and proclaims, without bashfulness, or any sign of a blush, that it is the noblest work of God. It has had a billion opportunities to know better, but all signs fail with this ass. I could say harsh things about it, but I cannot bring myself to do it—it is like hitting a child.

  Man is not to blame for what he is. He didn’t make himself. He has no control over himself. All the control is vested in his temperament—which he did not create—and in the circumstances which hedge him round, from the cradle to the grave, and which he did not devise and cannot change by any act of his will, for the reason that he has no will. He is as purely a piece of automatic mechanism as is a watch, and can no more dictate or influence his actions than can the watch. He is a subject for pity, not blame—and not contempt. He is flung head over heels into this world without ever a chance to decline, and straightway he conceives and accepts the notion that he is in some mysterious way under obligations to the unknown Power that inflicted this outrage upon him—and thenceforth he considers himself responsible to that Power for every act of his life, and punishable for such of his acts as do not meet with the approval of that Power—yet that same man would argue quite differently if a human tyrant should capture him and put chains upon him and make him a slave. He would say that the tyrant had no right to do that; that the tyrant had no right to put commands upon him of any kind, and require obedience; that the tyrant had no right to compel him to commit murder and then put the responsibility for the murder upon him. Man constantly makes a most strange distinction between man and his Maker, in the matter of morals. He requires of his fellow man obedience to a very creditable code of morals, but he observes without shame or disapproval his God’s utter destitution of morals.

  God ingeniously contrived man in such a way that he could not escape obedience to the laws of his passions, his appetites, and his various unpleasant and undesirable qualities. God has so contrived him that all his goings out and comings in are beset by traps which he cannot possibly avoid, and which compel him to commit what are called sins—and then God punishes him for doing these very things which from the beginning of time He had always intended that he should do. Man is a machine, and God made it—without invitation from any one. Whoever makes a machine, here below, is responsible for that machine’s performance. No one would think of such a thing as trying to put the responsibility upon the machine itself. We all know perfectly well—though we all conceal it, just as I am doing, until I shall be dead, and out of reach of public opinion—we all know, I say, that God, and God alone, is responsible for every act and word of a human being’s life between cradle and grave. We know it perfectly well. In our secret hearts we haven’t the slightest doubt of it. In our secret hearts we have no hesitation in proclaiming as an unthinking fool anybody who thinks he believes that he is by any possibility capable of committing a sin against God—or who thinks he thinks he is under obligations to God and owes Him thanks, reverence, and worship.

  New York, July 17, 1906

  Five or six weeks ago, when I was dictating those chapters of this autobiography which detail my disastrous adventures with Charles H. Webb, my first publisher; the American Publishing Company, my second publisher; and Charles L. Webster, my third publisher, I was by no means suspecting that I was on the eve of a disastrous adventure with still another publisher, the great corporation of Harper and Brothers. Perhaps disastrous is not just the term for this last adventure; possibly ridiculous is the better word. There was a sort of dignity about my adventure with Elisha Bliss, junior, of the American Publishing Company, in 1872, but that quality is quite lacking in this present one with Harper and Brothers. Bliss, in beguiling me into the belief that in changing the agreed wording of the contract for “Roughing It” from “half profit over and above cost of manufacture” to a specified royalty, was setting a trap for me, whereby he expected to rob me of about thirty thousand dollars, a trick which succeeded, as I have already explained. There was a sort of dignity about that, for the reason that thirty thousand dollars was a great sum of money to that poor little publishing company, and worth the sinful trouble which Bliss took to acquire it. In the present instance, the trap which Mr. Duneka set for me could result in a pe
cuniary advantage to Harper and Brothers of only ten or twelve thousand dollars, I imagine, and therefore, as I have suggested, the trick lacked dignity.

  My experiences with Webb, and Bliss, and Webster stand as abiding proof that when it comes to examining a contract and understanding it, I am an incapable. I have shown that I misread and misunderstood those contracts in every instance. My present experience is excellent evidence that I have no more ability in understanding a contract to-day than I had then. I wonder who is really the man hurt in a swindle—eventually: the perpetrator of it or the confiding ass who suffers from it? Bliss captured my thirty thousand dollars, but I made it cost him a quarter of a million thirteen years afterward. However, never mind this conundrum, I must get to the beginning of my subject.

  The beginning was three years ago. I was anxious to get my books concentrated in one publisher’s hands. The Harpers had half of them, and the American Publishing Company had the other half. Collier wanted to publish a cheap edition of them by subscription, and he offered to guarantee a sale of forty thousand sets a year. A concentration of the books in one publisher’s hands I presently found to be impossible, but Duneka said that he would be quite willing to give Bliss the subscription rights in the Harper books if Bliss would give him in return the trade rights in the Bliss books. Duneka said that he had made this very offer to Bliss two years before. I said I didn’t see any reason why Bliss should not accept these terms. I placed the matter before Bliss, and at first he was willing, but when I went back to Duneka with that word, Duneka was no longer willing himself; he had heard of the Collier offer, and had changed his mind. That was my first experience of Mr. Duneka’s facility in going back on his word.