Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/336

332 nobody responsible. Here is Mr. Darrow's language:

"Now, I do not want to be misunderstood about this. Even for the sake of saving the lives of my clients, I do not want to be dishonest and tell the court something that I do not honestly think in this case. I do not think that the universities are to blame. I do not think they should be held responsible. I do think, however, that they are too large, and that they should keep a closer watch, if possible, upon the individual.

"But you cannot destroy thought because, forsooth, some brain may be deranged by thought. It is the duty of the university, as I conceive it, to be the great storehouse of the wisdom of the ages, and to have its students come there and learn and choose. I have no doubt but what it has meant the death of many; but that we cannot help."

This is a damnable philosophy, and yet it is the flower that blooms on the stalk of evolution. Mr. Darrow thinks the universities are in duty bound to feed out this poisonous stuff to their students, and when the students become stupefied by it and commit murder, neither they nor the universities are to blame. I am sure, your honor and gentlemen of the jury, that you agree with me when I protest ae the adoption of any such philosophy in the state of Tennessee. A criminal is not relieved from responsibility merely because he found Nietzsche's philosophy in a library which ought not to contain it. Neither is the university guiltless if it permits such corrupting nourishment to be fed to the souls that are entrusted to its care. But, go a step farther, would the state be blameless if it permitted the universities under its control to be turned into training schools for murderers? When you get back to the root of this question, you will find that the legislature not only had a right to protect the students from the evolutionary hypothesis but was in duty bound to do so.

While on this subject, let me call your attention to another proposition embodied in Mr. Darrow's speech. He said that Dickey Loeb, the younger boy, had read trashy novels, of the blood and thunder sort. He even went so far as to commend an Illinois statute which forbids minors reading stories of crime. Here is what Mr. Darrow said; "We have a statute in this state, passed only last year, if I recall it, which forbids minors reading story of crime. Why? There is only one reason; because the legislature in its wisdom thought it would have a tendency to produce these thoughts and this life in the boys who read them."

If Illinois can protect her boys, why cannot this state protect the boys of Tennessee? Are the boys of Illinois any more precious than yours?

But to return to philosophy of an evolutionist. Mr. Darrow said: "I say to you seriously that the parents of Dickey Loeb are more responsible than he, and yet few boys had better parents." Again, he says, "I know that one of two things happened to this boy; that this terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and came from some ancestor, or that it came through his education and his training after he was born." He thinks the boy was not responsible for anything; his guilt was due, according to his philosophy, either to heredity or to environment.

But let me complete Mr. Darrow's philosophy based on evolution. He says: "I do not know what remote ancestor may have sent down the seed that corrupted him, and I do not know through how many ancestors it may have passed until it reached Dickey Loeb. All I know is, it is true, and there is not a biologist in the world who will not say I am right."

Psychologists who build upon the evolutionary hypothesis teach that man is nothing but a bundle of characteristics inherited from brute ancestors. That is the philosophy which Mr. Darrow applied in this celebrated