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Ebook has 1351 lines and 89853 words, and 28 pages
THE PROSECUTION
THE DEFENSE
THE PROSECUTION
THE DEFENSE
THE PROSECUTION
Now, then, I say under the correct construction of the act, that they cannot testify as to that. Why? Because in the wording of this act the legislature itself construed the instrument according to their intention.... What was the general purpose of the legislature here? It was to prevent teaching in the public schools of any county in Tennessee that theory which says that man is descended from a lower order of animals. That is the intent and nobody can dispute it under the shining sun of this day.
THE COURT
Now upon these issues as brought up it becomes the duty of the Court to determine the question of the admissibility of this expert testimony offered by the defendant.
It is not within the province of the Court under these issues to decide and determine which is true, the story of divine creation as taught in the Bible, or the story of the creation of man as taught by evolution.
If the state is correct in its insistence, it is immaterial, so far as the results of this case are concerned, as to which theory is true; because it is within the province of the legislative branch, and not the judicial branch of the government to pass upon the policy of a statute; and the policy of this statute having been passed upon by that department of the government, this court is not further concerned as to its policy; but is interested only in its proper interpretation and, if valid, its enforcement.... Therefore the court is content to sustain the motion of the attorney-general to exclude expert testimony.
THE PROSECUTION
THE DEFENSE
Statements of Noted Scientists as Filed into Record by Defense Counsel
Those who have written on the rights of men, have been much tormented to know for certain if a man who has been banished from his fatherland still belongs to his fatherland. It is nearly the same thing as asking if a gambler who has been driven away from the gaming-table is still one of the gamblers.
If to every man it is permitted by natural right to choose his fatherland, he who has lost the right of citizen can, with all the more reason, choose for himself a new fatherland; but can he bear arms against his former fellow-citizens? There are a thousand examples of it. How many French protestants naturalized in Holland, England and Germany have served against France, and against armies containing their own kindred and their own brothers! The Greeks who were in the King of Persia's armies made war on the Greeks, their former compatriots. One has seen the Swiss in the Dutch service fire on the Swiss in the French service. It is still worse than to fight against those who have banished you; for, after all, it seems less dishonest to draw the sword for vengeance than to draw it for money.
Few bankruptcies were known in France before the sixteenth century. The great reason is that there were no bankers. Lombards, Jews lent on security at ten per cent: trade was conducted in cash. Exchange, remittances to foreign countries were a secret unknown to all judges.
In England and in some other countries, one declares oneself bankrupt in the gazettes. The partners and creditors gather together by virtue of this announcement which is read in the coffee-houses, and they come to an arrangement as best they can.
As among the bankruptcies there are frequently fraudulent cases, it has been necessary to punish them. If they are taken to court they are everywhere regarded as theft, and the guilty are condemned to ignominious penalties.
It is too difficult to prove that a man has dishonoured himself on purpose, and has voluntarily ceded all his goods to his creditors in order to cheat them. When there has been a doubt, one has been content with putting the unfortunate man in the pillory, or with sending him to the galleys, although ordinarily a banker makes a poor convict.
Since then we have had eminent men, fraudulent bankrupts, but they have not been punished.
One day I was at a tragedy near by a philosopher. "How beautiful that is!" he said.
"What do you find beautiful there?" I asked.
"It is beautiful," he answered, "because the author has reached his goal."
There are actions which the whole world finds beautiful. Two of Caesar's officers, mortal enemies, send each other a challenge, not as to who shall shed the other's blood with tierce and quarte behind a thicket as with us, but as to who shall best defend the Roman camp, which the Barbarians are about to attack. One of them, having repulsed the enemy, is near succumbing; the other rushes to his aid, saves his life, and completes the victory.
They will say as much of the great moral maxims, of Zarathustra's--"In doubt if an action be just, abstain..."; of Confucius'--"Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses."
The negro with the round eyes and flat nose, who will not give the name of "beauties" to the ladies of our courts, will without hesitation give it to these actions and these maxims. The wicked man even will recognize the beauty of these virtues which he dare not imitate. The beauty which strikes the senses merely, the imagination, and that which is called "intelligence," is often uncertain therefore. The beauty which speaks to the heart is not that. You will find a host of people who will tell you that they have found nothing beautiful in three-quarters of the Iliad; but nobody will deny that Codrus' devotion to his people was very beautiful, supposing it to be true.
There are many other reasons which determine me not to write a treatise on beauty.
Samuel Ornik, native of Basle, was, as you know, a very amiable young man who, besides, knew his New Testament by heart in Greek and German. When he was twenty his parents sent him on a journey. He was charged to carry some books to the coadjutor of Paris, at the time of the Fronde. He arrived at the door of the archbishop's residence; the Swiss told him that Monseigneur saw nobody. "Comrade," said Ornik to him, "you are very rude to your compatriots. The apostles let everyone approach, and Jesus Christ desired that people should suffer all the little children to come to him. I have nothing to ask of your master; on the contrary, I have brought him something."
"Come inside, then," said the Swiss.
He waits an hour in a first antechamber. As he was very na?ve, he began a conversation with a servant, who was very fond of telling all he knew of his master. "He must be mightily rich," said Ornik, "to have this crowd of pages and flunkeys whom I see running about the house."
"I don't know what his income is," answered the other, "but I heard it said to Joly and the Abb? Charier that he already had two millions of debts."
"But who is that lady coming out of the room?"
"That is Madame de Pomereu, one of his mistresses."
"She is really very pretty; but I have not read that the apostles had such company in their bedrooms in the mornings. Ah! I think the archbishop is going to give audience."
"Say--'His Highness, Monseigneur.'"
"Willingly." Ornik salutes His Highness, presents his books, and is received with a very gracious smile. The archbishop says four words to him, then climbs into his coach, escorted by fifty horsemen. In climbing, Monseigneur lets a sheath fall. Ornik is quite astonished that Monseigneur carries so large an ink-horn in his pocket. "Don't you see that's his dagger?" says the chatterbox. "Everyone carries a dagger when he goes to parliament."
"That's a pleasant way of officiating," says Ornik; and he goes away very astonished.
He traverses France, and enlightens himself from town to town; thence he passes into Italy. When he is in the Pope's territory, he meets one of those bishops with a thousand crowns income, walking on foot. Ornik was very polite; he offers him a place in his cambiature. "You are doubtless on your way to comfort some sick man, Monseigneur?"
"Sir, I am on my way to my master's."
"Your master? that is Jesus Christ, doubtless?"
"What! you are in the pay of a cardinal? But do you not know that there were no cardinals in the time of Jesus Christ and St. John?"
"Is it possible?" cried the Italian prelate.
"Nothing is more true; you have read it in the Gospel."
"I have never read it," answered the bishop; "all I know is Our Lady's office."
"I tell you there were neither cardinals nor bishops, and when there were bishops, the priests were their equals almost, according to Jerome's assertions in several places."
"Holy Virgin," said the Italian. "I knew nothing about it: and the popes?"
"There were not any popes any more than cardinals."
The good bishop crossed himself; he thought he was with an evil spirit, and jumped out of the cambiature.
You despise them, books, you whose whole life is plunged in the vanities of ambition and in the search for pleasure or in idleness; but think that the whole of the known universe, with the exception of the savage races is governed by books alone. The whole of Africa right to Ethiopia and Nigritia obeys the book of the Alcoran, after having staggered under the book of the Gospel. China is ruled by the moral book of Confucius; a greater part of India by the book of the Veidam. Persia was governed for centuries by the books of one of the Zarathustras.
If you have a law-suit, your goods, your honour, your life even depends on the interpretation of a book which you never read.
Who leads the human race in civilized countries? those who know how to read and write. You do not know either Hippocrates, Boerhaave or Sydenham; but you put your body in the hands of those who have read them. You abandon your soul to those who are paid to read the Bible, although there are not fifty among them who have read it in its entirety with care.
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