Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/68

 and of osteopathy, Christian Science, spiritualism and all the other half rational and half supernatural quackeries with it. They are idiotic, like the tales displayed in the movies, but, again like the tales displayed in the movies, they are simple—and every man, high or low, prefers what he can understand to what puzzles and dismays him. The popularity of the farrago of absurdities called Fundamentalism—and it is popular among peasants, not only in the United States, but everywhere in Christendom—is thus easily understood. The cosmogonies that educated men toy with are all inordinately complex. To comprehend their veriest outlines requires an immense stock of exact knowledge and a special habit of thought, quite different in kind from the habit of thought which suffices for listening to the radio. It would be as vain to try to teach these cosmogonies to peasants as it would be to try to teach them to streptococci. But the cosmogony set forth in the first chapter of Genesis is so simple that a yokel can grasp it instantly. It collides ludicrously with many of the known facts, but he doesn’t know the known facts. It is logically nonsensical, but to him the nonsensical, in the sciences as in politics, has an