On the essays shelf:
The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain
In Mark Twain’s long Socratic dialogue essay “What Is Man?” (excerpt here), he states the theory (over and over again) that everything in man can be connected to outside influences, or “circumstance”. Nothing is organic to man alone. Man is a machine. Man likes to flatter himself in thinking he is the master of his own destiny, that his opinions are his own, that the way he thinks is because of careful consideration of all the alternatives. Mark Twain doesn’t agree. He thinks that every opinion we hold, every belief system, is because of our outer circumstances. We hold certain political views because of outer circumstances and the community in which we live. If we switch parties, it’s always because of outer circumstances, some inciting event. Not because man has used his brain and heart to really think things through. Same with religion and morals. All of those things are given to us by outside circumstances. A Buddhist isn’t born, a Buddhist is made.
It was a concept that obsessed him.
He worried over it, thought about it, studied it, for 20, 30 years, maybe more. It was one of his deepest held philosophies.
So when he was asked in 1910 by Harper’s Bazaar to write an essay about “the turning point of my life”, Twain looked at it from the view of competing, circling, chaotic outer circumstances, a bunch of accumulating random events that made him who he was. There was no one turning point. It couldn’t be found. Was it his first job as a writer? Well, yes, but there were so many outer circumstances that even made that a possibility, that even primed the pump, that he couldn’t point to that as “the thing”. He had to go further back. And then even further back. He finally ends up in the Garden of Eden in this essay: that was the turning point, for him, for all of us.
I love the way his mind works.
Clearly, publishing a book is a huge deal, and clearly having your first book be The Innocents Abroad (a huge hit) is a life-changer. Twain doesn’t discount that. But so many events participated in making that even possible, he couldn’t point to just one. He drives his point home again and again: Circumstance is the Ruler of us all.
He starts by describing a measles epidemic that overtook his town when he was 12 years old. He became very ill. He thought he was going to die. Everyone thought he was going to die. Of course, he did not die. But he describes in vivid detail what it was like for him, facing his mortality, and then, after that, his mother took him out of school and apprenticed him to a printer. It was the combination of those two events which made the rest of his life possible. If he hadn’t gotten the measles, his mother would not have apprenticed him to a printer. If he hadn’t been apprenticed to a printer, he wouldn’t have been introduced to the world of writing men and journalism. Being a printer meant he traveled around too. So the printer job was very important, but he can’t privilege that over the measles. The measles were the real thing, the real “turning point”.
It’s a long piece. Here’s an excerpt.
The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain
I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. 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. St 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. I advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day. This was another turning-point, another link.
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 bill 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. His temperament is not his invention, it is born in him, and he has no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it – except temporarily. But it won’t stay modified. It is permanent, like the color of the man’s eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray in certain unusual lights; but they remain their natural color when that stress is removed.
A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in Caesar’s way, his temperament would not have made him start for the Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with the money, but not that. It might have made him advertise the note – and wait. We can’t tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and buy into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to learn when it came his turn.
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 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. 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. I became a pilot.
By and by Circumstance came again – introducing the Civil War, this time, in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.
Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh link. My brother was appointed secretary in the new Territory of Nevada, and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I accepted.
In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into the mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea. the idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For amusement I scribbled things for the Virginia City Enterprise. One isn’t a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and learning – unconsciously at first, consciously later – to discriminate between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is unconsciously acquiring what is called a “style”. One of my efforts attracted attention, and the Enterprise sent for me and put me on its staff.
And so I became a journalist – another link. By and by Circumstance and the Sacramento Union sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of extraneous matter that hadn’t anything to do with sugar. But it was this extraneous matter that helped me to another link.
It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I did. And profitably. I had long ago had a desire to travel and see the world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me upon the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the “Quaker City Excursion.”
When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier – with the last link – the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link: I was asked to write a book, and I did it, and called it The Innocents Abroad. 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.
To borrow one of Mark Twin’s favorite words – Lovely.
Great essay! I have never read that one.