Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/81

 school funds of the state, to teach"—what, teach evolution? Oh! no—"to teach the theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man, as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." That is what was foisted on the people of this state, under a caption which never meant it, and could give no hint of it, that it should be a crime in the state of Tennessee to teach any theory of the origin of man, except that contained in the divine account as recorded in the Bible. But the state of Tennessee under an honest and fair interpretation of the constitution has no more right to teach the Bible as the divine book than that the Koran is one, or the book of Mormons, or the book of Confucius, or the Budda, or the Essays of Emerson, or any one of the 10,000 books to which human souls have gone for consolation and aid in their troubles. Are they going to cut them out? They would have to pick the right caption at least, and they could not pick it out without violating the constitution, which is as old and as wise as Jefferson.

Your Honor, there can be no sort of question, I submit, as a lawyer, I may be wrong, I have been wrong before—there is no more question that this violates the constitution in its provisions. The caption must state the substance and meaning of the act, and the act can contain nothing excepting the substance of the caption; and there be no more question about it than that two and two make four. They will have to arrange their cohorts and come back for another fight if the courts of Tennessee stand by their own constitution, and I presume they will.

It is binding on all the courts of Tennessee and on this court among the rest, and it would be a travesty that a caption such as this and a body such as this is woudwould [sic] be declared valid law in the state of Tennessee. So much for that. Now, as to the statute itself. It is full of weird, strange, impossible and imaginary provisions. Driven by bigotry and narrowness they come together and make this statute and bring this litigation. I cannot conceive anything greater.

What is this law? What does it mean? Help out the caption and read the law. "Be it enacted by the general assembly of the state of Tennessee that it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the universities, normals and all the public schools in the state which are supported in whole or in part by public school funds of the state, to teach any theory that denies the conception of the divine creation of man as put in the Bible and teach in its stead that man is descended from a lower order of animal."

The statute should be comprehensible. It should not be written in Chinese anyway. It should be in passing English. As you say, so that common, human beings would understand what it meant, and so a man would know whether he is liable to go to jail when he is teaching not so ambiguous as to be a snare or a trap to get someone who does not agree with you. It should be plain, simple and easy. Does this statute state what you shall teach and what you shall not? Oh, no! Oh, no! Not at all. Does it say you cannot teach the earth is round? Because Genesis says it is flat? No. Does it say you connotcannot [sic] teach that the earth is millions of ages old, because the account in Genesis makes it less than six thousand years old? Oh, no. It doesn't state that. If it did you could understand it. It says you shan't teach any theory of the origin of man that is contrary to the divine theory contained in the Bible.

Now let us pass up the word "divine!" No legislature is strong enough in any state in the Union to characterize and pick any book as being divine. Let us take it as it is. What is the Bible? Your Honor,