DELIRIUM IN DAYTON
T REY are bearing up bravely in Dayton. When -A- they determined to put Mr. John T. Scopes upon his trial for teaching the diabolical doctrine of Evolution they felt that a millennium was at hand : innumerable visitors would assemble to applaud their moral courage, local industries would blossom in unexampled prosperity, real estate would soar in value, and their names would go down to future ages as vindicators of the angels and defenders of the faith. Somehow they had miscalculated.
The great lawyers turned up ; the ice-cream men, quack- medicine sellers, religious maniacs and journalists -turned up ; but there has only been a small trickle of the visitors who pay.
Still, they are trying hard to pretend that everything is well. And obviously they are a decent sort of people.
Mr. W. J. Bryan and his fellow-Fundamentalists may go out and denounce Mr. Scopes : they may swear that he and his defenders are sending the children of America into everlasting torment. But they bear him no It is merely their job to anathematize him ; and out of business hours they swap cigars and everyone shakes hands in front of the camera-man. There is some evidence, too, that the inhabitants of Dayton are attempting to think ; and that is very difficult for them. Only one of the jurymen has ever read anything but newspapers, and one of them cannot read at all. But those good honest rusty minds are creaking a little. We learn from the Daily News that a local doctor inquired of their correspondent whether "the private life of Mr. Bernard Shaw conformed with the vile nature of his writings." A local politician announced mournfully that science and religion would never become reconciled.
To prove the value of irrational belief the Holy Rollers have gone to Dayton. They sit about under trees and howl : they foam at the mouth and throw fits ; they whack the ground with their hands, feet and bodies. These are white men, remember ; but their worship is no better than Voodoo worship. It seems a strange way of showing that we have no relationship with anthropoids.
But, though it is impossible to be serious about Dayton, there is a serious aspect to this outbreak of absurdity. The harm that such bigotry and stupidity can work is very great. Fundamentalists are among the worst enemies of religion ; for they are raising false issues and may easily bring the name of religion into discredit. In the presence of a Fundamentalist it might well seem to us that materialism was the only sanity. Take this very Darwinian theory about which they are so suddenly angry. The majority of scientists have long abandoned the rigid gospel of Natural Selection in favour of a theory of Creative Evolution. There are too many contradictions involved in Darwin's first formulation of his theory. It is obvious, for example, that while development from reptile into bird was proceeding, the stages between winglessness and wings, considered in themselves, without allowing an end in view, were positive disadvantages in the "struggle for existence " ; half a wing is certainly not an improvement upon no wing. But if we are asked to decide between Darwin and the Fundamentalists we must confess ourselves at a loss. The question should never arise ; for neither view is tenable. On the whole we should be forced to admit that Darwin was right. We should be forced to declare ourselves on the side of the materialists. For Darwin's conception was rich in effects ; and with modifications and corrections it has become one of the mainstays of our religious hope, a new and amazing example of "the geometrizing of God." It saddens us when we see that America has before it so sterna fight against the obscurantism and irrationality of some of its inhabitants. It saddens us the more because we know that unreasonable attempts at sup- pression bring unreasonable rebellions in their train. Mr. Frank R. Kent referred in a recent number to the popularity of nasty literature in America ; and we are certain that the cause will be found in the block- headed illiberality of the over-moral. We read of a State in which no film may be shown in cinemas if it includes photographs of people smoking. Another State censored a film "because it showed a man burning a letter from his wife. It was argued that he might tear the letter up, but burning it would bring marriage into contempt." It is such tyranny as this that en- courages licence. Yet the prospect is not wholly dismal ; for the very struggle between tyrants and rebels will ensure in the future a balance and sanity which is living and vigorous, not commonplace or dead.
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