When my high school English teacher presented, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn as the greatest American novel, I identified with the rascal Huck, but had no idea that Mark Twain would eventually alter the course of my life.
After a highly intuitive human physiology, student thoughtfully asked if memorizing all the parts of a fetal pig were “really important,†I was perplexed. I wondered if human physiology were not the highest level of a high school biology curriculum, then what was? I shared my quandary with my wife and she directed me to, The Great Thoughts, by George Seldes.
In a splendid synchronicity, in his introduction, Seldes cited an excerpt from Mark Twain’s short story, What Is Man:
“…the chance of reading a book or paragraph in a newspaper, can start a man on a new track and make him renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are in sympathy with his new ideal; and the result for that man, can be an entire change of his way of life.â€
Mark Twain has been regarded by some as a genius, raconteur extraordinaire, gifted humorist and according to William Faulkner, “The Father Of American Literature.â€
He has also been known as a cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking-curmudgeon, provocateur and scalawag. Perhaps he embodied the adage, “many of the insights of the saints were gathered by their experience as sinners.â€
However, a term not likely used to describe Twain would have been “Bible Thumper.†And yet, the title of his short story, What Is Man, is an excerpt from the O-T Psalm:8:3-5.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
human being that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
What Is Man was highly controversial, but I suspect that few of Twain’s critics understood that the short story was an Hegelian Dialectical discussion between an “Old Man†and a “Young Man†trying to answer the probative question, what is man?
Regardless of his title, Twain was a student of life and had a keen interest in science and scientific inquiry. Even so, he referred to God who made humans “a little lower than angels.â€
Furthermore, the passage from What Is Man, resonates with James Allen’s book, As A Man Thinketh, which is based on an excerpt from the O-T book of Proverbs, 23:7.
The theme of the book can be summed-up in his poem:
Mind is the master power that molds and makes,
and man is mind and evermore he takes,
the tool of thought and shaping what he wills,
brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills,
he thinks in secret, and it comes to pass,
environment is but his looking glass.
According to William James (“Father of American Psychologyâ€) “Allen’s philosophy was the greatest revolution of the 19th century.†It was part of a movement toward a reconciliation between science and religion following Darwin’s publication of The Origin Of Species.
However, knowing all of this did not prepare me for what would happen when the spirit of Mark Twain visited the Biodesign Class on a starry night on top of Yosemite’s world-famous Half Dome.
Several Classes had made the trek previously and I was hoping that the weather would allow a dazzling star display. Just in case, I packed a copy of Huck Finn in my backpack.
On this night, the stars were so bright it looked like we could gather a basket full of them. After we were snuggled in a tight circle, enraptured by the miracle of 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, I read the following conversation between Huck and Jim:
“It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to MAKE so many. Jim said the moon could have laid them; well that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say anything against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they’d got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.“
Twain cleverly inserted levity in the often-contentious battle of creation vs. evolution. However, what happened next was soul-stirring and sent a chill up my spine. Evidently the convergence of stars—students—and the spirit of Mark Twain triggered comments that soared to heights impossible to reach in the lowlands. Suddenly, I became a student and they became my teachers. And then, something mystical happened; one of the students spontaneously reached out in the darkness and joined hands with classmates on his/her right and left. In a spiritual flash, 30 individuals were joined in a perfect circle of love and I realized, “these kids are immortal.â€
At that moment everything seemed right in the Universe and it became clear that Mark Twain enriched my life and empowered me to offer students a choice of believing they are soulless accidents of time or perhaps made by God, “a little lower than angels.â€