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Darrow Cited for Contempt

Scopes Trial Judge Makes Charge | Natural Science Briefs Submitted

By the Associated Press

Court Room, Dayton, Tenn., July 20 –

Clarence Darrow of counsel for the defense in the John T. Scopes evolution trial, was cited for contempt of court today by Judge John T. Raulston. The attorney was ordered to appear tomorrow and show why contempt proceedings should not be instituted.

The Judge names as ground for the citation remarks of Mr. Darrow to the court when the court excluded the testimony of the scientific experts from the jury. Mr. Darrow was directed to make $5000 bond for his appearance to answer the citation.

“Until passion has had time to subdue, the court has withheld any action,” the judge read. “I feel it is now time to speak….”

“Men may become prominent, but they should never hold themselves superior to the law.

“He who would hurl contempt at my court, insults and outrages one of the greatest commonwealths in the country.

“I feel that further forbearance would cease to be a virtue.”

The court received a guarantee of Mr. Darrow’s apology and the trial proceeded by efforts of the defense to introduce documentary evidence in the absence of the jury.

Court Record Read

In announcing the contempt citation, Judge Raulston read from the record of Friday’s proceedings. Mr Darrow arose and said he did not know whether he could make the bond.

“I guess you can,” said Judge Raulston. Mr. Darrow was smiling, the judge was not smiling.

R. M. Standefer, pastor of the Clinton, Tenn. Methodist Episcopal Church South offered the opening prayer.

After the judge had read his statement, the case proceeded, the defense offering a certified copy of the Government’s message to the legislature approving the bill. The State objected to the introduction of the document.

Judge Raulston excluded the message. The defense also offered in evidence the textbook of biology adopted by the state Book Commission. Arthur G. Days of defense council read what this textbook says of Charles Darwin. Mr. Hays said the purpose of the defense was to show the public policy of the state. The State again objected. Judge Raulston ruled that the book might be filed “for the present.”

Controversy Over Testimony

A mild controversy developed between defense and state council as to the presentation of natural science testimony. The question was as the whether the statement should be submitted without reading, or have portions read to the court.

The defense contended that it should be permitted to read these statements to the court in the hope that the court might be convinced of error in having held the law constitutional.

The debate went back and forth for an hour, A. T. Stewart Attorney General and W. J. Bryan for the State, and Dudley Field Malone, Mr. Hays and Clarence Darrow, for the defense, taking part.

Statements from eight natural scientists were offered to be placed in the record for submission to a higher court in the event Mr. Scopes is convicted of teaching evolution theories in the public schools in violation of state law.

Tennessee’s Teaching Practice

“Tennessee is an ideal place in which to study and learn the story of rock layers which have been laid out down from the earliest time in which any life existed up to the present,” said Wilbur A. Nelson, state geologist of Tennessee, in a statement admitted to the record of the Scopes case.

Mr. Nelson, who will become head of the department of geology of the University of Virginia and state geologist of Virginia in September, said that the study of buried animal and plant remains has been taught in Tennessee since 1828. He said in part:

Such teaching could not have been carried on through 97 years unless teaching of evolution has been permitted by those professors who found this state.

In connection with evolution, it is especially of interest to note that the balance ages in the rocks can … [text illegible].

It therefore appears that it would be impossible to study or teach biology in Tennessee or elsewhere without using the theory of evolution.

Tracing Geologic Periods

In a statement which traced the geologic periods, indicating the evolutionary evidences of each, Kirtley T. Mather, chairman of the department of geology at Harvard University, declared, “none of these facts is really in any way disturbing to the adherents to Christianity.”

Mr. Mather, who is a member of the Baptist Church at Newton Center, Mass, and a teacher of Sunday School declared in part:

Not one of those facts contains any teaching of Jesus Christ known to me. Neither could you say his teachings deal with moral law and spiritual realities. Natural science deals with physical laws and material results. When men are ordered to make a choice between science, with its confident and unanimous depicture of the evolutionary principle on one hand, and religion, with its necessary appeal to things unseen and unproven on the other, they are more likely to abandon religion than to abandon science.

If such a choice is forced upon us the Churches will lose many of their best educated young people, the very ones upon whom they can depend for leadership in the coming years. Fortunately such a choice is absolutely unnecessary. To say that one must choose between evolution and Christianity is exactly like telling a child as he starts for school that he must choose between spelling and mathematics.

Thorough knowledge of each is essential to success – both individual and actual – in life.

Although it is possible to construct a mechanistic evolutionary hypothesis which rules God out of the world, the theories of theistic evolution held by millions of scientifically trained Christian men and women lead inevitably to a better knowledge of God and a better truth of His effective presence in the world.

Discussing the two versions of the creation given in the first and second chapters of Genesis, Mr. Mather said,

“There is an obvious lack of harmony between these two babbled accounts of creation so far as details of process and order of events are concerned. They are, however in perfect accord with presenting the spiritual truth that God is the author and the administrator of the universe.

The Bible doesn’t state that the world was made about six thousand years ago. . . . Concerning the length of early history the Bible is absolutely silent. Natural science may conclude that the earth is a hundred million or a hundred billion years old, the conclusion does not affect the Bible in the slightest degree.

Evolution and Natural Selection

Evolution, “the doctrine of how things have changed in the past and how they are changing in the present,” was discussed by Dr. Winnerton C. Curtis, zoologist, University of Missouri, in his statement. He said in part,

“The historical fact of evolution seems affected by overwhelming evidence. The course pursued by evolution is known broadly in many instances, but in the nature of this case the evidence is limited and mainly at these steps will remain uncertain, without however, a calling in question of the historic fact.

The causes of evolution present the most difficult problem of all and the one regarding which we know the least. Thence we turn to a discussion of Darwin’s work, declaring his accomplishment was two-fold.

In the first place he established organic evolution as the only reasonable explanation of the past history of living things. Secondly, he offered us natural selection that which applies and inequitable explanation for the origins of species and a name for the causes of evolution.

Continuing, Dr. Curtis went into a detailed discussion of the two accomplishments of the natural sciences declaring that although theories of natural selection has suffered a decline within recent years, no other hypothesis of the causes of evolution had completely replaced it stating;

As a result of this situation there had been much enthusiasm among scientists regarding the adequacy of what is often referred to as the Darwinian Theory, meaning Natural Selection. In condemning selection as an inadequate explanation of the problem biologists have often seemed to condemn evolution itself.

It is not strange that the jurymen, for whom Darwinism and evolution are synonymous terms, believe that evolution has been reverted when he hears that better is Darwinism is on the wane. He does not understand that what is thus meant by Darwinism is not the historical fact of evolution, but the proposed cause of evolution – natural selection.

Investigations of Soil

Organic evolution from the point of view of the soil investigator was discussed by Jacob G. Lipman, in a statement admitted to the record. Dr. Lipman is dean of the College of Agriculture and director of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station.

“A direct relation may be traced,” said Dr. Lipman, “between soils, plants, and animals in the evolution of organic life.

Among the early forms of life, he continued, there were bacteria capable of developing in a purely mineral medium, such forms being found today in the sea, in mineral springs and in soils.

“Some of them,” said his prepared statement, “can obtain the energy for their life processes by oxidizing hydrogen gas, methane marsh gas, carbon monoxide, sulphur, iron and even carbon.

“In the primitive seas, and on the rock surfaces, these simple forms of life prepared the way for the more highly organized being. Some bacteria are able to manufacture nitrogen gas from the air. They thus supply material out of which the protoplasm of a plant and animal cells is made.”

View of Anthropologist

Dr. Fay-Cooper Cole, Anthropologist of the University of Chicago, in his statement, declared in-part, that anthropologists accept evolution as the most satisfactory explanation of observed facts relating to the material universe, the world and all the life on it.

“The hold of the anthropologist is man, man’s body and man’s society,” said Dr. Cole, “and in this way he finds himself working side by side with the biologist and geologist.”

“Only a few points relating to man and his history have been reviewed,” concluded the statement, “but enough has been said to indicate that the testimony of man’s body, of his embryological life, of his fossil remains, strongly points to the face that he is closely related to the other members of the animal world and that his development to his present form had taken place through immense periods of time.

“It seems conclusive that it is impossible to teach anthropology on the pre-history of many without teaching evolution.”

Evolution Called “Key”
There is no degree of conflict between evolution and the Bible, Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf, zoologist, former head of the zoology department at Oberlin College, declared in his statement.

The thing to do, he said, is not to attempt to guide God’s self-revelation into channels “of our own ignorant choosing, but to seek his thought and himself in nature, history and through his showing us his habit of producing results by gradual growth, by evolution rather than by immediate fiat.”

Evolution, he declared, not only has occurred but evidences of it are visible today both in the plant and the animal world - evolution is the only key found to the geological distribution of animals and plants and to the differences noted between them, he asserted.

“Philosophy of Change”

The evolutionist stands for and believes in a changing world, Dr. Horatio Hackett Newman, zoologist of the University of Chicago, asserted.

“Evolution is merely this philosophy of change as opposed by the philosophy of change as opposed by the philosophy of unchangeability,” said Dr. Newman. “One must choose between these alternate philosophies for there is no intermediate position, once admit a changing world and you admit the essence of evolution.

“Evolution had been tried and tested in every conceivable way for considerably over half a century. Numbers of biological facts have been examined in the light of this principle and without a single exception they have been entirely compatible with it…”

Evolution Held Basis

A “serious national disaster,” threatens if the vote of legislatures rather than scientific investigation is to determine the details to be taught in the public schools in this country, Charles Hubbard Judd, director of the school of education of the University of Chicago, declared in his statement.

“In my judgment” the document said, “it will be quite impossible to carry on the work in most of the departments in most of the highest institutions in the State of Tennessee without teaching the doctrine of evolution as the fundamental basis to the understanding of all human institutions.”

Elaborate studies, he said, show that a long process of evolution has been going on in tools, language, customs, laws, and other things directly affecting the life of man.