There are, especially, two figures, not so important for the quality of their thought, but immensely important for the influence of it, who stand out as being overweighted and overcome by the evolutionary blight. Anatole France, following Renan, filled his books and his life with gentle, indulgent, kindly tolerance, with rare human insight and sympathy. Yet beneath it all, beneath the lenient tenderness of Sylvestre Bonnard, and the kindly curiosity of Jérôme Coignard, and the patient comprehension of Monsieur Bergeret, always there was the sense of the nullity of human effort and the futility of human fate. All the motives and interests of men and women are reduced to the Darwinian residuum of self-preservation and propagation, or as France repeatedly puts it, more boldly and baldly, love and hunger are the two poles of our being. And when he makes intimate confession of the workings of the theory in his own person and life, this is the result: ‘It is said, “Man is the lord of creation.” Man is the lord of suffering, my friend. There is no clearer proof of the non-existence of God than life.... If you could read in my soul, you would be terrified.... There is not in all the universe a creature more unhappy than I. People think me happy. I have never been happy for one day, not for a single hour.’[104] Or take the case of Mark Twain, far more important for Americans than Anatole France, because it may safely be said that few if any authors more influenced and to-day influence the youth of America than the creator of Huckleberry Finn. Mark, like France, was the kindest, the gentlest, the most humane of men and writers. His energetic sympathy and support were given to relieve suffering and oppression everywhere. But although he was not particularly expert in science or philosophy, the plague of utter nihilistic disbelief had infected his soul as completely as that of France, and far more militantly. The destructive effect of the evolutionary teaching cannot be more fully displayed than in the arguments which Mark, to save his own credit, puts into the mouth of Satan in ‘The Mysterious Stranger’: ‘A God ... who mouths justice and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!’[105]