What is Man? and Other Essays

What Is Man? is Mark Twain at his most ruthless and least entertaining. Written in 1906 but kept private for years because Twain knew it would shock, this dialogue between an Old Man and a Young Man mounts a devastating assault on human self-regard. The Old Man argues, with relentless logic, that we are machines: programmed by influences beyond our control, driven by ego, lacking genuine free will or moral freedom. The Young Man fights back, citing honor, love, and the soul. But the Old Man has an answer for everything. This is not the Mark Twain of Mississippi steamboats and boyhood adventures. This is the Twain who had buried his wife and daughters and seen America transform into something cruel. The philosophical argument is genuinely unsettling, and Twain knows it. The essays that follow range from the politically barbed to the darkly comic, but none softens the central blow: that we are puppets who believe ourselves free.