Flaws Behind “The Damned Human Race” Flaws appear within Mark Twain’s essay, “The Damned Human Race.” First of all, one flaw stems from his use of dicto simpliciter. This is supported when Twain states: “Since the Moral Sense has but one office, the one capacity-to enable man to do wrong-it is plainly without value to him” (Par.17). From this excerpt, Twain only focuses on the wicked and unfavorable aspects of the moral sense and excludes the favorable aspects of it, such as how it enables people to help others. Such assumptions seem flawed, as they fail to provide a qualified generalization. Another flaw in Twain’s essay is his use of ad ignorantiam. In the essay, Twain writes: “[Human vermiform appendix] has no value; it cannot perform any useful service” (Par.23). Here, Twain illustrates a series of human attributes that are useless or unimportant; hence, he concludes that humans are not important. His statement is not convincing because it lacks evidence.
In other words, he makes his assumption simply on the basis that it has not been proven false. Some people might argue that Twain’s essay is not flawed. This seems viable, as many people note his work is a satire. In fact, “One blessing inherent in good satires is the ability to dangle glittering extremisms in front readers” (Koonman 117). Therefore, it can be inferred that Twain effectively uses satire to engage the readers in his argument. However, throughout the piece, he overwhelmingly focuses on the inferior side of humanity and barely includes the favorable qualities that human possess. Meanwhile, the arguments are based on unqualified generalizations and appeals to ignorance. Therefore, Twain’s essay is flawed.