What Is Man?

Mark Twain's What Is Man? opens as a razor-edged philosophical duel between an Old Man and a Young Man, using steam engines, heredity, and education to argue that human beings are not self-made at all. The Old Man insists that people, like machines, are shaped by ancestry, environment, and outside influence, and that even genius, courage, charity, patriotism, and conscience are only rearranged products of conditioning. Shakespeare, soldiers, philanthropists, and the supposedly selfless all become evidence for Twain's unsettling claim that every act is driven by one motive: the search for inner peace and self-approval. That bleak logic deepens into a satirical moral test, then expands into a grim story of abolitionist zeal, secret rituals, and public martyrdom, where outrage and vanity turn reform into violence and spectacle. In a separate travel essay, Twain shifts to Switzerland, lamenting ladder railways and celebrating the best way to meet the Alps on foot, while praising Interlaken's sunshine, serenity, and the nation's enduring spirit of freedom. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.