The Damned Human Race

This satirical essay, “The Damned Human Race” by Mark Twain sets off on an uphill battle, to try and convince the entire human race to change its ways. Twain attempts to prove that morality, like any other virtue, has a dark side and this has been the cause of many of man’s problems.

Mark Twain LOVED CATS. He once said, “I simply can’t resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course.” … Twain wrote: “When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.”

Two excerpts below, from: The Damned Human Race by Mark Twain:

“Cats are loose in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the cat, has brought the cat’s looseness with him but has left the unconsciousness behind–the saving grace which excuses the cat. The cat is innocent, man is not.”

“The cat plays with the frightened mouse; but she has this excuse, that she does not know that the mouse is suffering. The cat is moderate–unhumanly moderate: she only scares the mouse, she does not hurt it; she doesn’t dig out its eyes, or tear off its skin, or drive splinters under its nails–man-fashion; when she is done playing with it she makes a sudden meal of it and puts it out of its trouble. Man is the Cruel Animal. He alone is of that distinction.”

TO READ THE ENTIRE ESSAY, click HERE
*Please Note* You will find spelling mistakes in this essay. “As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling.”…from the Autobiography of Mark Twain