Collection 5: "The Lowest Animal" by Mark Twain

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so-called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man.

For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals, since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion, I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is commonly called the scientific method.

That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result.

These experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens and covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work.

It exhibits slight variations—in color, stature, mental caliber, and so on—due to climate, environment, and so forth; but it is a species by itself and not to be confounded with any other.

It exhibits slight variations—in color, stature, mental caliber, and so on—due to climate, environment, and so forth; but it is a species by itself and not to be confounded with any other.

In the course of my reading, I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl—that, and to provide some fresh meat for his larder.

The fact stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn’t; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn’t.

It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a good deal in the transition.

I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite.

In order to bolster up a tottering reputation, the ant pretended to store up supplies, but I was not deceived.

These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: He is avaricious and miserly, they are not.

These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: He is avaricious and miserly, they are not.

Roosters keep harems, but it is by consent of their concubines; therefore no wrong is done.

Men keep harems, but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws which the other sex was allowed no hand in making.

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity—these are strictly confined to man; he invented them.

Man—when he is a North American Indian—gouges out his prisoner’s eyes; when he is King John, with a nephew to render untroublesome, he uses a red-hot iron; when he is a religious zealot dealing with heretics in the Middle Ages, he skins his captive alive and scatters salt on his back...

Man—when he is a North American Indian—gouges out his prisoner’s eyes; when he is King John, with a nephew to render untroublesome, he uses a red-hot iron; when he is a religious zealot dealing with heretics in the Middle Ages, he skins his captive alive and scatters salt on his back...

Man—when he is a North American Indian—gouges out his prisoner’s eyes; when he is King John, with a nephew to render untroublesome, he uses a red-hot iron; when he is a religious zealot dealing with heretics in the Middle Ages, he skins his captive alive and scatters salt on his back...

He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out,
as the Hessians did in our Revolution, and as the boyish Prince
Napoleon did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his
own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no
quarrel.

These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a higher court.