The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete


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one which for the moment is most pleasing to ITSELF. Perfectly correct!  
An immense admission for a man not otherwise sane.  
Up to that point he could have written chapters III and IV of my  
suppressed "Gospel." But there we seem to separate. He seems to concede  
the indisputable and unshakable dominion of Motive and Necessity (call  
them what he may, these are exterior forces and not under the man's  
authority, guidance or even suggestion)--then he suddenly flies the  
logic track and (to all seeming) makes the man and not these exterior  
forces responsible to God for the man's thoughts, words and acts. It is  
frank insanity.  
I think that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and  
Necessity he grants, a third position of mine--that a man's mind is a  
mere machine--an automatic machine--which is handled entirely from the  
outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing: not an ounce  
of its fuel, and not so much as a bare suggestion to that exterior  
engineer as to what the machine shall do, nor how it shall do it nor  
when.  
After that concession, it was time for him to get alarmed and shirk--for  
he was pointing straight for the only rational and possible next-station  
on that piece of road the irresponsibility of man to God.  
And so he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result:  
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