**UPDATE** MARK TWAIN’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO BE RELEASED !!!
Mark Twain passed away on April 21, 1910. Many scholars agree that the birth of the American novel occurred with the publication of Huckleberry Finn.
Mark Twain was a storyteller, a humanitarian, and a world traveler, but did you know that Mark Twain also a philosopher? His short story, The Mysterious Stranger, predates the Matrix. At the end of the story in a conversation with Satan, it is revealed that existence is but an illusion.
- from The Mysterious Stranger:
“In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?”
Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer,
“There is no other.”
A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words might be true—even must be true.
“Have you never suspected this, Theodor?”
“No. How could I? But if it can only be true—”
“It is true.”
A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and I said, ”But —but—we have seen that future life—seen it in its actuality, and so—”
“It was a vision—it had no existence.”
I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. “A vision?—a vi—”
“Life itself is only a vision, a dream.”
It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings!
“Nothing exists; all is a dream. God — man — the world — the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars— a dream,
all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space— and you!”………….
It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream.
Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought,
a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought,
wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and I realized, that all he had said was true.