What Is Man?

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"What Is Man?", published by Mark Twain in 1906, is a dialogue between a young man and an older man jaded to the world. The title refers to Psalm 8-4,^{[citation needed]} which begins 'what is man, that you are mindful of him...'.

It involves ideas of destiny and free will, as well as of psychological egoism. The Old Man asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The Young Man objects, and asks him to go into particulars and furnish his reasons for his position.

The work appears to be a genuine and an earnest debate of his opinions about human nature, rather than satirical. Twain held views similar to that of the old man prior to writing 'What is Man?'. However, he seems to have varied in his opinions of human freedom.^[1]

Isaac Asimov apparently had in mind this story when he wrote "... That Thou Art Mindful of Him",^[2] since Asimov's title is from the same Bible verse, and two of Asimov's robots debate the same subject.

External links

What Is Man? at Project Gutenberg
What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, University of California Press, 1973.

↑ Twain, Mark (Author), Paul Baender (Editor) What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings 1973 UCP ISBN 978-0-520-01621-7, Introduction p4 ff
↑ in Asimov, Isaac.The bicentennial man and other stories Doubleday 1976

v t e Works by Mark Twain

Novels	The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Prince and the Pauper Adventures of Huckleberry Finn A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court The American Claimant Tom Sawyer Abroad Pudd'nhead Wilson Tom Sawyer, Detective Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc A Double Barrelled Detective Story A Horse's Tale The Mysterious Stranger Hellfire Hotchkiss

Short stories	"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" "General Washington's Negro Body-Servant" "My Late Senatorial Secretaryship" "Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls" "A Literary Nightmare" "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage" "The Invalid's Story" "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn" "1601" "The Stolen White Elephant" "Luck" "Those Extraordinary Twins" "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" "A Dog's Tale" "Extracts from Adam's Diary" "The War Prayer" "Eve's Diary" "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" "My Platonic Sweetheart" "The Private Life of Adam and Eve"

Short story collections	Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance Sketches New and Old A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches The Library of Humor Merry Tales The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches The Washoe Giant in San Francisco

Plays	Is He Dead?

Essays	"The Awful German Language" "Advice to Youth" "English As She Is Taught" How to Tell a Story and Other Essays "Concerning the Jews" "A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth" "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" "To My Missionary Critics" "Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany" "What Is Man?" "Queen Victoria's Jubilee" "The United States of Lyncherdom" "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" Letters from the Earth

Non-fiction	The Innocents Abroad Roughing It Old Times on the Mississippi A Tramp Abroad Life on the Mississippi Following the Equator What Is Man? Is Shakespeare Dead? Queen Victoria's Jubilee Autobiography of Mark Twain Mark Twain's Notebook King Leopold's Soliloquy The Private History of a Campaign That Failed Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire The Bible According to Mark Twain Christian Science

Speeches	Votes for Women

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