Education: The Great Trial

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The pens and tongues of contumely were arrested. Mocking mouths were shut. Even righteous protestation hushed its clamor, as when, having striven manfully in single combat, a high-helmed champion is stricken by Jove's bolt and the two snarling armies stand at sudden gaze, astonished and bereft a moment of their rancor.

The death of William Jennings Bryan furnished Tennessee's anti-Evolution case with a climax. In the trial itself (TIME, July 6 et seq.), there was no climax. Judge Raulston, having denied the defense an injunction against Teacher Scopes' indictment on the ground that the state anti-Evolution law was quite unconstitutional, and having further refused to admit scientific evidence (save as affidavits* in the record to instruct higher courts) by which the defense would have sought to disprove Scopes' misdemeanor through "reconciling" the Biblical with the scientific account of creation, there remained to the trial nothing but the bald testimony of two schoolboys that Scopes had "taught Evolution." Though the trial lasted a fortnight, costing over $25,000,† the schoolboys' testimony was practically all the farmer-jurors were permitted to hear in the courtroom. It alone constituted the basis for their verdict of "Guilty."