Christopher -- The influence seems pretty clear on the philosophical beliefs of Mark Twain's later life. Joe Twichell wrote Clemens in the summer of 1901, after tiring of the deterministic rants of the "What Is Man?" variety: “Really, you are getting quite orthodox on the doctrine of Total Human Depravity.” It was what kids today would call a "snap" -- Twichell was going for the jugular, referring to the old-style Calvinism both men knew well from childhood and despised. To emphasize this point, Twichell lent Clemens a copy of Jonathan Edwards' Freedom of the Will, which Clemens read on the train as he returned to New York after a visit to Hartford. He wrote Twichell in a letter dated February 1902: “From Bridgeport to New York; thence to home; and continuously until near midnight I wallowed and reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immediately refreshed and fine at 10 this morning, but with a strange and haunting sense of having been on a three days’ tear with a drunken lunatic.” Clemens also acknowledged that he agreed with Edwards—“that the Man (or his Soul or his Will) never creates an impulse itself, but is moved to action by an impulse back of it. . . . Up to that point he could have written chapters III and IV of my suppressed ‘Gospel”’ [i.e., "What Is Man?"]. Where Clemens believed Edwards went wrong was, ironically, the same point at which Twichell later accused Clemens of going wrong: “He finally flies the logic track and (to all seeming) makes the man and not these exterior forces responsible to God for the man’s thoughts, words and acts. It is frank insanity.” -- Regards, Steve Steve Courtney Terryville, CT