The Autobiography of Mark Twain · Chapter
Macfarlane explained
Twain recounts his time in Cincinnati at age twenty, where he befriended a serious and philosophical Scotsman named Macfarlane.
What happens
Twain recounts his time in Cincinnati at age twenty, where he befriended a serious and philosophical Scotsman named Macfarlane. Despite Macfarlane's limited formal education, he possessed deep knowledge of the Bible and dictionary, and independently developed a proto-Darwinian theory of evolution that held man, not animals, as the flawed and morally corrupt species.
Themes in this chapter
Character and Morality
Macfarlane argues that man is uniquely depraved, possessing malice, envy, and selfishness, and that intellect is used to exploit others.
Hypocrisy and Human Nature
Macfarlane's critique of human nature highlights hypocrisy, patriotism, and the capacity for cruelty as uniquely human traits.
Characters to notice
- Mark Twain
The narrator, aged twenty, living in a Cincinnati boardinghouse and spending evenings with Macfarlane.
- Macfarlane
A forty-year-old Scottish boarder, serious and philosophical, who discusses evolution and human depravity with Twain.
Key passages
“He said that man’s heart was the only bad heart in the animal kingdom; that man was the only animal capable of feeling malice, envy, vindictiveness, revengefulness, hatred, selfishness...”
Macfarlane claimed that humans alone possess a corrupt heart, capable of malice, envy, and selfishness, unlike any other animal.
Macfarlane's central thesis on human moral inferiority.
“Macfarlane considered that the animal life in the world was developed in the course of aeons of time from a few microscopic seed germs... and that this development was progressive upon an ascending scale toward ultimate perfection until man was reached; and that then the progressive scheme broke pitifully down and went to wreck and ruin!”
Macfarlane believed life evolved from microscopic germs toward perfection, but that the arrival of man caused the entire progressive scheme to collapse.
Macfarlane's pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory, with a pessimistic view of humanity.