o others. The
mind, he declared, adapted, consciously or unconsciously; it did not
create. In a letter which follows he elucidates this doctrine. The
reference in it to the "captain" and to the kerosene, as the reader
may remember, have to do with Captain "Hurricane" Jones and his
theory of the miracles of "Isaac and of the prophets of Baal," as
expounded in Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion.

By a trick of memory Clemens gives The Little Duke as his suggestion
for The Prince and the Pauper; he should have written The Prince and
the Page, by the same author.

*****

To Rev. F. Y. Christ, in New York:

REDDING, CONN., Aug., '08.

DEAR SIR,--You say "I often owe my best sermons to a suggestion received
in reading 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 and ideas to suggestions received from sources outside of
myself." The simplified English of this proposition is--"No man's brains
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 never has done it. In all cases, little and big, the
thought is born of a suggestion; and in all cases the suggestions come
to the brain from the outside. The brain never acts except from exterior
impulse.

A man can satisfy himself of the truth of this by a single process,--let
him examine every idea that occurs to him in an hour; 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 sometime or
other. Usually the source of the suggestion is immediately traceable,
but sometimes it isn't.

However, if you will examine every 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 until your brain originated it. It was born of an outside
suggestion--Sir Thoma