August 28 Friday – In Redding, Conn. Sam replied to the Aug. 25 of Fred V. Christ:
Dear Sir: / You say: “I often owe my best sermons to a suggestion received in reading” . . . and let us add, “or from other exterior sources.”
Your remark is not quite in accordance with the facts. We must change it to “I owe all my thoughts, sermons & ideas to suggestions received from sources outside of myself.”
The simplified English of this proposition is—
“No man’s brain has ever originated an idea.”
It is an astonishing thing that after all these ages the world goes on thinking the human brain- machinery can originate a thought.
It can’t. It has never done it. In all cases, little and big, the thought is born of a suggestion; and in all cases the suggestion comes to the brain from the outside. The brain never acts, except from an exterior impulse.
A man can satisfy himself of the truth of this by a quite simple process: let him examine every idea that occurs to him in an hour; in a day; in a week;—in a lifetime, if he please. He will always find that an outside something suggested the thought: something which he saw with his eyes, or heard with his ears, or perceived by his touch—not necessarily to day nor yesterday, nor last year, nor twenty years ago, but some time or other. Usually the source of the suggestion is immediately traceable, but sometimes it isn’t. However, if you will examine each thought that occurs to you for the next two days, you will find that in at least nine cases out of ten you can put your finger on the outside suggestion—and that ought to convince you that No. 10 had that source too, although you cannot at present hunt it down and find it.
The idea of writing to me would have had to wait a long time if it waited till your brain originated it. It was born of an outside suggestion—Sir Thomas & my old captain.
The hypnotist thinks he has invented a new thing—suggestion! This is very sad.
I don’t know where my captain got his “Karosene” idea (it was forty-one years ago and he is long ago dead): but I know it didn’t originate in his head, but was born of a suggestion from the outside. The chief mate (who was present) couldn’t invent the idea of writing out the tale for print, and there was nothing in his circumstances to bring that idea to him from the outside; but my case was different: my trade was sure to flood me with suggestions that this was usable stuff for me.
Yesterday a guest said:
“How did you come to think of writing the Prince and Pauper?”
“I didn’t. The thought came to me from the outside—suggested by that pleasant and picturesque little history-book, Charlotte M. Yonge’s “Little Duke.” I doubt if Mrs. Burnett knows whence came to her the suggestion to write “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” but I know: it came from reading the “Prince and Pauper.” In all my life I have never originated an idea, and neither has she—nor anybody else.”
Man’s mind is a clever machine, and can work up materials into ingenious fancies & ideas, but it can’t create the materials. None but the gods can do that.
In Sweden I saw a vast machine receive a block of wood and turn it into marketable matches in two minutes. It could do everything but make the wood. That is the kind of machine the human mind is. Maybe this is not a large compliment, but it is all I can afford.
Your friend and sincere well-wisher, / S L. Clemens [MTP].
Note: the old Captain of 41 years before, “long ago dead,” was likely Edgar (Ned) Wakeman (1818-1875); A review of Christ’s letter reveals Sir Thomas to be Sir Thomas Browne .
Gribben gives us a short discussion of disagreement about The Little Duke, Richard the Fearless (1854) by Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) being in Sam’s recollection here [792]
Sam also replied to the Aug. 25 from Henry W. Ruoff, editor and compiler of The Century Book of Facts, which ran yearly during this period, published by the King-Richardson Co. Sam headed the letter “Private.”
Dear Sir: / By “private,” I mean don’t print any remarks of mine.
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I like your list.
The “longest visible influence.”
These terms REQUIRE you to add Jesus. And they doubly & trebly require you to add Satan.
From A.D. 350 to A.D. 1850 these gentlemen exercised a vaster influence over a fifth part of the human race than was exercised over that fraction of the race by all other influences combined. Ninety-nine one-hundredths of this influence proceeded from Satan, the remaining fraction of it from Jesus. During those 1500 years the fear of Satan & Hell made 99 Christians when love of God & Heaven landed one. During those 1500 years, Satan’s influence was worth very nearly a hundred times as much to the business and was the influence of all the rest of the Holy Family put together.
You have asked me a question, & I have answered it seriously & sincerely. You have put in Buddha;—a god, with a following, at one time, greater than Jesus has ever had; a god with perhaps a little better evidence of his godship than that which is offered for Jesus’s. How then, in fairness, can you leave Jesus out? And if you put him in, how can you logically leave Satan out? Thunder is good! Thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work. / Very truly yours [MTP].
Nathan H. Weed for National Phonograph wrote to ask Sam for “a brief interview…on a matter which it is confidently believed you will deem of mutual interest.” Would it be convenient for Weed to come sometime next week? [MTP].