Mr. Clemens told me that while he was living in Hartford in the early
eighties, I think, he wrote a paper to be read at the fortnightly club
to which he belonged. This club was composed chiefly of men whose
deepest interests were concerned with the theological and the
religiously orthodox. One of his friends, to whom he read this paper
in advance, solemnly warned him not to read it before the club. For he
felt confident that a philosophical essay, expressing candid doubt as to
the existence of free will, and declaring without hesitation that every
man was under the immitigable compulsion of his temperament, his
training, and his environment, would appear unspeakably shocking,
heretical and blasphemous to the orthodox members of that club. "I did
not read that paper," Mr. Clemens said to me, "but I put it away,
resolved to let it stand the corrosive test of time. Every now and
then, when it occurred to me, I used to take that paper out and read it,
to compare its views with my own later views. From time to time I added
something to it. But I never found, during that quarter of a century,
that my views had altered in the slightest degree. I had a few copies
published not long ago; but there is not the slightest evidence in the
book to indicate its authorship." A few days later he gave me a copy,
and when I read that book, I found these words, among others, in the
prefatory note:

"Every thought in them (these papers) has been thought (and accepted as
unassailable truth) by millions upon millions of men--and concealed,
kept private. Why did they not speak out? Because they dreaded (and
could not bear) the disapproval of the people around them. Why have I
not published? The same reason has restrained me, I think. I can find
no other."

'What is Man?' propounds at length, through the medium of a dialogue