Mencken on Man

           The World Serious is over and  pro basketball has thus far failed to ignite Uncle Jack's interest so he finds himself with plenty of time for more cerebral pursuits like exploring the acerbic works of the Sage of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken.  This is in no way a chore inasmuch as he finds reading Mencken at least as much fun as watching LeBron James.  Sometimes he does both at the same time and can hardly contain himself. He  has been aided and abetted in his travels through Menckeniana by Mrs. U. J. who has a knack for locating choice out-of-print tomes and surprising him with them.  Most recently she found a copy of  Prejudices, Third Series, published by Alfred A. Knopf  in 1922, whence the following is excerpted:


All the errors and incompetencies of the Creator reach their climax in man.  As a piece of mechanism he is the worst of them all; put beside him, even a salmon or a staphylococcus is a sound and efficient machine.  He has the worst kidneys known to comparative zoology, and the worst lungs, and the worst heart. His eye, considering the work it is called upon to do, is less efficient the the eye of an earthworm. an optical instrument maker who made an instrument so clumsy would be mobbed by his customers.  Alone of all animals, terrestrial, celestial or marine, man is unfit by nature to go abroad in the world he inhabits.  He must clothe himself, protect himself, swathe himself, armor himself.  He is eternally in the position of a turtle born without a shell,  a dog without hair, a fish without fins.  Lacking his heavy and cumbersome trappings, he is defenseless even against flies.  As God made him he hasn't even a tail to switch them off.  


      More to come next time.