Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/175

Rh, that all of us who are interested as lawyers on either side, could claim what we—what your honor so graciously grants—a hearing. I have got down here for fear I might forget them, certain points that I desire to present for your honor's consideration. In the first place, the statute—our position is that the statute is sufficient. The statute defines exactly what the people of Tennessee desired and intended and did declare unlawful and it needs no interpretation. The caption speaks of the evolutionary theory and the statute specifically states that teachers are forbidden to teach in the schools supported by taxation in this state, any theory of creation of man that denies the divine record of man's creation as found in the Bible, and that there might be no difference of opinion—there might be no ambiguity—that there might be no such confusion of thought as our learned friends attempt to inject into it, the legislature was careful to define what it meant by the first part of the statute. It says to teach that man is a descendant of any lower form of life—if that had not been there—if the first sentence had been the only sentence in the statute, then these gentlemen might come and ask to define what that meant or to explain whether the thing that was taught was contrary to the language of the statute in the first sentence, but the second sentence removes all doubt, as has been stated by my colleague. The second sentence points out specifically what is meant, and that is the teaching that man is the descendant of an lower form of life, and if the defendant taught that as we have proven by the textbook that he used and as we have proven by the students that went to hear him—if he taught that man is a descendant of any lower form of life, he violated the statute, and more than that we have his own confession that he knew he was violating the statute. We have the testimony here of Mr. White, the superintendent of schools, who says that Mr. Scopes told him he could not teach that book without violating the law. We have the testimony of Mr. Robertson—Robinson—the head of the Board of Education, who talked with Mr. Scopes just at the time the schools closed, or a day or two afterward, and Mr. Scopes told him that he had reviewed that book just before the school closed, and that he could not teach it without teaching evolution and without violating the law, and we have Mr. Robinson's statement that Mr. Scopes told him that he and one of the teachers, Mr. Ferguson, had talked it over after the law was passed and had decided that they could not teach it without the violation of the law, and yet while Mr. Scopes knew what the law was and knew what evolution was, and knew that it violated the law, he proceeded to violate the law. That is the evidence before this court, and we do not need any expert to tell us what that law means. An expert cannot be permitted to come in here and try to defeat the enforcement of a law by testifying that it isn't a bad law and it isn't—I mean a bad doctrine—no matter how these people phrase the doctrine—no matter how they eulogize it. This is not the place to try to prove that the law ought never to have been passed. The place to prove that, or teach that, was to the legislature. If these people were so anxious to keep the state of Tennessee from disgracing itself, if they were so afraid that by this action taken by the legislature, the state would put itself before the people of the nation as ignorant people and bigoted people—if they had half the affection for Tennessee that you would think they had as they come here to testify, they would have come at a time when their testimony would have been valuable and not at this time to ask you to refuse to enforce a law because they did not think the law ought to have been passed. And, my friends, if the people of Tennessee were to go into a state like New York—the one from which this impulse comes to resist this law, or go into any state—if they went into any state and tried to convince the people that a law they