Mark Twain's Essay 'The Damned Human Race'

In his essay, “The Damned Human Race,” Mark Twain makes the argument that humans did not evolve from the animals to become a higher species, but that instead, they have sunken below the animals to become a lower race. He calls this the “Descent of Man from the Higher Animals,” in a parody of the Darwinian theory of “The Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals.” Twain’s character takes the role of a scientist performing experiments in the London Zoological Gardens, and he establishes his credibility early on, saying that he has “subjected every postulate… to the crucial test of actual experiment…” The narrator opens with an experiment contrasting an English Earl and an Anaconda. The Earl, Twain says, went hunting buffalo. He killed seventy-two,

Next, he compared Man’s relentless hoarding to “squirrels and bees and certain birds” that only accumulated a winter store and then refused to collect any more. Twain continues, claiming that Man is the only animal that engages in revenge, indecency, vulgarity, obscenity, and war. He says Man is the only animal who takes land from the previous owner and drives him out. He says Man is the only animal that enslaves his own kind and views them as lesser. After going over some more of Man’s faults, Twain approaches coexistence. He claims he taught a cat, a dog, a rabbit, a fox, a squirrel, some doves, and even a monkey to be friends and live together affectionately. Then tells the reader that he put together many men of different nationalities and religions. When he came back two days later, he found they had all killed each other over a theological dispute. Twain finishes his essay by stating that the one thing Man has that causes him to be so much worse than the animals is his Moral Sense. It gives Man the ability to distinguish between good and evil, and by doing that, makes it possible for there to be evil, instead of just doing what it takes to