L. Is it true the human race thinks the universe was created for its convenience?

S. Yes, Lord.

L. The human race is modest.  Speaking as a member of it, what do you think the other animals are for?

S. To furnish food and labor for man.

L. What is the sea for?

S. To furnish food for man.  Fishes.

L. And the air?

S. To furnish sustenance for man.  Birds and breath.

L. How many men are there?

S. Fifteen hundred millions.

L. (Referring to notes.) Take your pencil and set down some statistics.  In a healthy man’s lower intestine 28,000,000 microbes are born daily and die daily.  In the rest of a man’s body 122,000,000 microbes are born daily and die daily.  The two sums aggregate-what?

S. About 150,000,000.

L. In ten days the aggregate reaches what?

S. Fifteen hundred millions.

L. It is for one person.  What would it be for the whole human population?

S. Alas, Lord, it is beyond the power of figures to set down that multitude.  It is billions of billions multiplied by billions of billions, and these multiplied again and again by billions of billions.  The figures would stretch across the universe and hang over into space on both sides.

L. To what intent are these uncountable microbes introduced into the human race?

S. That they may eat.

L. Now then, according to man’s own reasoning, what is man for?

S. Alas-alas!

L. What is he for?

S. To-to-furnish food for microbes.

L. Manifestly.  A child could see it.  Now then, with this common-sense light to aid your perceptions, what are the air, the land, and the ocean for?

S. To furnish food for man so that he may nourish, support, and multiply and replenish the microbes.

L. Manifestly.  Does one build a boarding-house for the sake of the boarding-house itself or for the sake of the boarders?

S. Certainly for the sake of the boarders.

L. Man’s a boarding-house.

S. I perceive it, Lord.

L. He is a boarding-house.  He was never intended for anything else.  If he had had less vanity and a clearer insight into the great truths that lie embedded in statistics he would have found it out early.  As concerns the man who has gone unpunished eleven million years, is it your belief that in life he did his duty by his microbes?

S. Undoubtedly, Lord.  He could not help it.

L. Then why punish him?  He had no other duty to perform.

Whatever else may be said of this kind of doctrine, it is at least original and has a conclusive sound.  Mark Twain had very little use for orthodoxy and conservatism.  When it was announced that Dr. Jacques Loeb, of the University of California, had demonstrated the creation of life by chemical agencies he was deeply interested.  When a newspaper writer commented that a “consensus of opinion among biologists” would probably rate Dr. Loeb as a man of lively imagination rather than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena, he felt called to chaff the consensus idea.