Letters from the Earth Read online

  Letters from the Earth

  Mark Twain

  Mark Twain

  Letters from the Earth

  Letters from the Earth

  The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast - archangels - their heads level with His ankle-bone.

  When the Creator had finished thinking, He said, "I have thought. Behold!"

  He lifted His hand, and from it burst a fountain-spray of fire, a million stupendous suns, which clove the blackness and soared, away and away and away, diminishing in magnitude and intensity as they pierced the far frontiers of Space, until at last they were but as diamond nailheads sparkling under the domed vast roof of the universe.

  At the end of an hour the Grand Council was dismissed.

  They left the Presence impressed and thoughtful, and retired to a private place, where they might talk with freedom. None of the three seemed to want to begin, though all wanted somebody to do it. Each was burning to discuss the great event, but would prefer not to commit himself till he should know how the others regarded it. So there was some aimless and halting conversation about matters of no consequence, and this dragged tediously along, arriving nowhere, until at last the archangel Satan gathered his courage together - of which he had a very good supply - and broke ground. He said: "We know what we are here to talk about, my lords, and we may as well put pretense aside, and begin. If this is the opinion of the Council - "

  "It is, it is!" said Gabriel and Michael, gratefully interrupting.

  "Very well, then, let us proceed. We have witnessed a wonderful thing; as to that, we are necessarily agreed. As to the value of it - if it has any - that is a matter which does not personally concern us. We can have as many opinions about it as we like, and that is our limit. We have no vote. I think Space was well enough, just as it was, and useful, too. Cold and dark - a restful place, now and then, after a season of the overdelicate climate and trying splendors of heaven. But these are details of no considerable moment; the new feature, the immense feature, is - what, gentlemen?"

  "The invention and introduction of automatic, unsupervised, self-regulating law for the government of those myriads of whirling and racing suns and worlds!"

  "That is it!" said Satan. "You perceive that it is a stupendous idea. Nothing approaching it has been evolved from the Master Intellect before. Law - Automatic Law - exact and unvarying Law - requiring no watching, no correcting, no readjusting while the eternities endure! He said those countless vast bodies would plunge through the wastes of Space ages and ages, at unimaginable speed, around stupendous orbits, yet never collide, and never lengthen nor shorten their orbital periods by so much as the hundredth part of a second in two thousand years! That is the new miracle, and the greatest of all - Automatic Law! And He gave it a name - the LAW OF NATURE - and said Natural Law is the LAW OF GOD - interchangeable names for one and the same thing."

  "Yes," said Michael, "and He said He would establish Natural Law - the Law of God - throughout His dominions, and its authority should be supreme and inviolable."

  "Also," said Gabriel, "He said He would by and by create animals, and place them, likewise, under the authority of that Law."

  "Yes," said Satan, "I heard Him, but did not understand. What is animals, Gabriel?"

  "Ah, how should I know? How should any of us know? It is a new word."

  [Interval of three centuries, celestial time - the equivalent of a hundred million years, earthly time. Enter a Messenger-Angel.] "My lords, He is making animals. Will it please you to come and see?"

  They went, they saw, and were perplexed. Deeply perplexed - and the Creator noticed it, and said, "Ask. I will answer."

  "Divine One," said Satan, making obeisance, "what are they for?"

  "They are an experiment in Morals and Conduct. Observe them, and be instructed."

  There were thousands of them. They were full of activities. Busy, all busy - mainly in persecuting each other. Satan remarked - after examining one of them through a powerful microscope: "This large beast is killing weaker animals, Divine One."

  "The tiger - yes. The law of his nature is ferocity. The law of his nature is the Law of God. He cannot disobey it."

  "Then in obeying it he commits no offense, Divine One?"

  "No, he is blameless."

  "This other creature, here, is timid, Divine One, and suffers death without resisting."

  "The rabbit - yes. He is without courage. It is the law of his nature - the Law of God. He must obey it."

  "Then he cannot honorably be required to go counter to his nature and resist, Divine One?"

  "No. No creature can be honorably required to go counter to the law of his nature - the Law of God."

  After a long time and many questions, Satan said, "The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the - well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?"

  "They are not to blame. It is the law of their nature. And always the law of nature is the Law of God. Now - observe - behold! A new creature - and the masterpiece - Man!"

  Men, women, children, they came swarming in flocks, in droves, in millions.

  "What shall you do with them, Divine One?"

  "Put into each individual, in differing shades and degrees, all the various Moral Qualities, in mass, that have been distributed, a single distinguishing characteristic at a time, among the nonspeaking animal world - courage, cowardice, ferocity, gentleness, fairness, justice, cunning, treachery, magnanimity, cruelty, malice, malignity, lust, mercy, pity, purity, selfishness, sweetness, honor, love, hate, baseness, nobility, loyalty, falsity, veracity, untruthfulness - each human being shall have all of these in him, and they will constitute his nature. In some, there will be high and fine characteristics which will submerge the evil ones, and those will be called good men; in others the evil characteristics will have dominion, and those will be called bad men.

  Observe - behold - they vanish!"

  "Whither are they gone, Divine One?"

  "To the earth - they and all their fellow animals."

  "What is the earth?"

  "A small globe I made, a time, two times and a half ago. You saw it, but did not notice it in the explosion of worlds and suns that sprayed from my hand. Man is an experiment, the other animals are another experiment. Time will show whether they were worth the trouble. The exhibition is over; you may take your leave, my lords."

  Several days passed by.

  This stands for a long stretch of (our) time, since in heaven a day is as a thousand years.

  Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator's sparkling industries - remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms. He had made them confidentially to his safe friends the other archangels, but they had been overheard by some ordinary angels and reported at Headquarters.

  He was ordered into banishment for a day - the celestial day. It was a punishment he was used to, on account of his too flexible tongue. Formerly he had been deported into Space, there being nowhither else to send him, and had flapped tediously around there in the eternal night and the Arctic chill; but now it occurred to him to push on and hunt up the earth and see how the Human-Race experiment was coming along.

  By and by he wrote home - very privately - to St. M
ichael and St. Gabriel about it.

  Satan's Letter

  This is a strange place, and extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane. Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God." This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.

  Moreover - if I may put another strain upon you - he thinks he is the Creator's pet. He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea? Fills his prayers with crude and bald and florid flatteries of Him, and thinks He sits and purrs over these extravagancies and enjoys them. He prays for help, and favor, and protection, every day; and does it with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer of his has ever been answered. The daily affront, the daily defeat, do not discourage him, he goes on praying just the same. There is something almost fine about this perseverance. I must put one more strain upon you: he thinks he is going to heaven!

  He has salaried teachers who tell him that. They also tell him there is a hell, of everlasting fire, and that he will go to it if he doesn't keep the Commandments. What are Commandments? They are a curiosity. I will tell you about them by and by.

  Letter II

  "I have told you nothing about man that is not true." You must pardon me if I repeat that remark now and then in these letters; I want you to take seriously the things I am telling you, and I feel that if I were in your place and you in mine, I should need that reminder from time to time, to keep my credulity from flagging.

  For there is nothing about man that is not strange to an immortal. he looks at nothing as we look at it, his sense of proportion is quite different from ours, and his sense of values is so widely divergent from ours, that with all our large intellectual powers it is not likely that even the most gifted among us would ever be quite able to understand it.

  For instance, take this sample: he has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race - and of ours - sexual intercourse!

  It is as if a lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he should elect to leave out water!

  His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists - utterly and entirely - of diversions which he cares next to nothing about, here in the earth, yet is quite sure he will like them in heaven. Isn't it curious? Isn't it interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for it is not so. I will give you details.

  Most men do not sing, most men cannot sing, most men will not stay when others are singing if it be continued more than two hours. Note that.

  Only about two men in a hundred can play upon a musical instrument, and not four in a hundred have any wish to learn how. Set that down.

  Many men pray, not many of them like to do it. A few pray long, the others make a short cut.

  More men go to church than want to.

  To forty-nine men in fifty the Sabbath Day is a dreary, dreary bore.

  Of all the men in a church on a Sunday, two-thirds are tired when the service is half over, and the rest before it is finished.

  The gladdest moment for all of them is when the preacher uplifts his hands for the benediction. You can hear the soft rustle of relief that sweeps the house, and you recognize that it is eloquent with gratitude.

  All nations look down upon all other nations.

  All nations dislike all other nations.

  All white nations despise all colored nations, of whatever hue, and oppress them when they can.

  White men will not associate with "niggers," nor marry them.

  They will not allow them in their schools and churches.

  All the world hates the Jew, and will not endure him except when he is rich.

  I ask you to note all those particulars.

  Further. All sane people detest noise.

  All people, sane or insane, like to have variety in their life. Monotony quickly wearies them.

  Every man, according to the mental equipment that has fallen to his share, exercises his intellect constantly, ceaselessly, and this exercise makes up a vast and valued and essential part of his life. The lowest intellect, like the highest, possesses a skill of some kind and takes a keen pleasure in testing it, proving it, perfecting it. The urchin who is his comrade's superior in games is as diligent and as enthusiastic in his practice as are the sculptor, the painter, the pianist, the mathematician and the rest. Not one of them could be happy if his talent were put under an interdict.

  Now then, you have the facts. You know what the human race enjoys, and what it doesn't enjoy. It has invented a heaven out of its own head, all by itself: guess what it is like! In fifteen hundred eternities you couldn't do it. The ablest mind known to you or me in fifty million aeons couldn't do it. Very well, I will tell you about it.

  1. First of all, I recall to your attention the extraordinary fact with which I began. To wit, that the human being, like the immortals, naturally places sexual intercourse far and away above all other joys - yet he has left it out of his heaven! The very thought of it excites him; opportunity sets him wild; in this state he will risk life, reputation, everything - even his queer heaven itself - to make good that opportunity and ride it to the overwhelming climax. From youth to middle age all men and all women prize copulation above all other pleasures combined, yet it is actually as I have said: it is not in their heaven; prayer takes its place.

  They prize it thus highly; yet, like all their so-called "boons," it is a poor thing. At its very best and longest the act is brief beyond imagination - the imagination of an immortal, I mean. In the matter of repetition the man is limited - oh, quite beyond immortal conception. We who continue the act and its supremest ecstasies unbroken and without withdrawal for centuries, will never be able to understand or adequately pity the awful poverty of these people in that rich gift which, possessed as we possess it, makes all other possessions trivial and not worth the trouble of invoicing.

  2. In man's heaven everybody sings! The man who did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing on earth is able to do it there. The universal singing is not casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on, all day long, and every day, during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybody stays; whereas in the earth the place would be empty in two hours. The singing is of hymns alone. Nay, it is of one hymn alone. the words are always the same, in number they are only about a dozen, there is no rhyme, there is no poetry: "Hosannah, hosannah, hosannah, Lord God of Sabaoth, 'rah! 'rah! 'rah! siss! - boom!… a-a-ah!" 3. Meantime, every person is playing on a harp - those millions and millions! - whereas not more than twenty in the thousand of them could play an instrument in the earth, or ever wanted to.

  Consider the deafening hurricane of sound - millions and millions of voices screaming at once and millions and millions of harps gritting their teeth at the same time! I ask you: is it hideous, is it odious, is it horrible?

  Consider further: it is a praise service; a service of compliment, of flattery, of adulation! Do you ask who it is that is willing to endure this strange compliment, this insane compliment; and who not only endures it, but likes, enjoys it, requires if, commands it? Hold your breath!

  It is God! This race's god, I mean. He sits on his
throne, attended by his four and twenty elders and some other dignitaries pertaining to his court, and looks out over his miles and miles of tempestuous worshipers, and smiles, and purrs, and nods his satisfaction northward, eastward, southward; as quaint and na ve a spectacle as has yet been imagined in this universe, I take it.

  It is easy to see that the inventor of the heavens did not originate the idea, but copied it from the show-ceremonies of some sorry little sovereign State up in the back settlements of the Orient somewhere.

  All sane white people hate noise; yet they have tranquilly accepted this kind of heaven - without thinking, without reflection, without examination - and they actually want to go to it! Profoundly devout old gray-headed men put in a large part of their time dreaming of the happy day when they will lay down the cares of this life and enter into the joys of that place. Yet you can see how unreal it is to them, and how little it takes a grip upon them as being fact, for they make no practical preparation for the great change: you never see one of them with a harp, you never hear one of them sing.

  As you have seen, that singular show is a service of praise: praise by hymn, praise by prostration. It takes the place of "church." Now then, in the earth these people cannot stand much church - an hour and a quarter is the limit, and they draw the line at once a week. That is to say, Sunday. One day in seven; and even then they do not look forward to it with longing. And so - consider what their heaven provides for them: "church" that lasts forever, and a Sabbath that has no end! They quickly weary of this brief hebdomadal Sabbath here, yet they long for that eternal one; they dream of it, they talk about it, they think they think they are going to enjoy it - with all their simple hearts they think they think they are going to be happy in it!

  It is because they do not think at all; they only think they think. Whereas they can't think; not two human beings in ten thousand have anything to think with.