Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/335

Rh of what we might call the intellectual cult.

"He wrote one book called 'Beyond the Good and Evil' which was a criticism of all moral precepts, as we understand them, and a treatise that the intelligent man was beyond good and evil, that the laws for good and the laws for evil did not apply to anybody who approached the superman. He wrote on the will to power.

"I have just made a few short extracts from Nietzsche that show the things that he (Leopold) has read, and these are short and almost taken at random. It is not how this would affect you. It is not how it would affect me. The question is how it would affect the impressionable, visionary, dreamy mind of a boy—a boy who should never have seen it—too early for him."

Quotations from Nietzsche: "Why so soft, oh, my brethren? Why so soft, so unresisting and yielding? Why is there so much disavowal and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there so little fate in your looks? For all creators are hard and it must seem blessedness unto you to press your hand upon millenniums and upon wax. This new table, oh, my brethren, I put over you; Become hard. To be obsessed by moral consideration presupposes a very low grade of intellect. We should substitute for morality the will to our own end, and consequently to the means to accomplish that. A great man, a man whom nature has built up and invented in a grand style, is colder, harder, less cautious and more free from the fear of public opinion. He does not possess the virtues which are compatible with respectability, with being respected, nor any of those things which are counted among the virtues of the herd."

Mr. Darrow says, that the superman, a creation of Nietzsche, has permeated every college and university in the civilized world.

"There is not any university in the world where the professor is not familiar with Nietzsche, not one. Some believe it and some do not believe it. Some read it as I do and take it as a theory, a dream, a vision, mixed with good and bad, but not in any way related to human life. Some take it seriously. There is not a university in the world of any high standing where the professors do not tell you about Nietzsche and discuss him, or where the books are not there.

"If this boy is to blame for this, where did he get it? Is there any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche's philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? And there is no question in this case but what that is true. Then who is to blame? The university would be more to blame than he is; the scholars of the world would be more to blame than he is. The publishers of the world are more to blame than he is. Your honor, it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university. It does not meet any ideas of justice and fairness to visit upon his head the philosophy that has been taught by university men for twenty-five years."

In fairness to Mr. Darrow, I think I ought to quote two more paragraphs. After this bold attempt to excuse the student on the ground that he was transformed from a well-meaning youth into a murderer by the philosophy of an atheist, and on the further ground that this philosophy was in the libraries of all the colleges and discussed by the professors—some adopting the philosophy and some rejecting it—on these two grounds he denies that the boy should be held responsible for the taking of human life. He charges that the scholars in the universities were more responsible than the boy, because they furnished such books to the students, and then he proceeds to exonerate the universities and the scholars,