Blackwell Reference Online

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When Mark Twain died in 1910, newspapers and magazines throughout the country printed obituaries that attempted to sum up the man and the significance of his writings. “He was a humanist,” and his writings were illuminated by “the keenest insight into human nature” (April 22, 1910, Kansas City Star). “How keen he was in his knowledge of human nature” (April 22, 1910, Hartford Courant). He had “a deep knowledge of human nature, which made every character that he described live and breathe. He knew men, through and through” (April 22, 1910, [Richmond] Times Dispatch). His writings “go to the very heart of human nature and sound the depths of its aspirations, aims, and hopes” (April 22, 1910, Los Angeles Times). I could multiply instances of this sort of encomium, but what is interesting here is not so much the notes of appreciation articulated along similar lines as the fact that, in 1910, “human nature” was a vexed concept, as it had been for a hundred years.This is an inquiry into a central feature of Mark Twain's thinking – his longstanding fascination with human nature – but I am not concerned with deciding whether human beings are socially constructed, culturally conditioned, genetically programmed, divinely sanctioned, or satanically hatched. In one sense, the “truth” of the concept of human nature lies entirely outside the scope of this essay. Nevertheless, if, as William James ... log in or subscribe to read full text