Science vs. Evolution
(Abstract* of address delivered by William
Jennings Bryan, at Charleston, West Virg'nia,
before the State Legislature, April, 13, 1923./
Mr. President and Members of the Legislature:
I profoundly appreciate the honor you do
me in inviting me to address you. I feel the
more favored because I am permitted to speak
to you on one of the most important subjects
which any legislative body can consider—
namely, education.
We live for the future more than for the
present. Each generation is indebted beyond
calculation to the generations that have pre
ceded it and must discharge this obligation by
rendering a service to the generations that fol
low. I gladly accepted your invitation and
come to you with a message which I feel it my
duty to deliver.
I am an enthusiast on the subject of educa
tion and would like to see every child born into
the world given an opportunity for its fullest
intellectual development. Children are a part
of God’s plan; they come into the world with
out their own volition, and every child has as
much right to all the advantages which life can
give as has your child or my child.
But the mind is a mental machine and needs
a heart to direct it. If the heart goes wrong,
the Hind goes with it. The mind plans as will
ingly for the commission of crime as for the
benefit of society. Education, if turned to. evil,
is worse than useless to the one who possesses
it and may be very harmful to the public that
pays for it. Religion in the heart is just as
important, therefore, as training for the mind;
more important, since “out of the heart” (not
out of tho head) “are the issues of life.”
It is my purpose to show you how religious
faith and Christian ideals are being undermined
by teachers who believe that man is a descend
ant from the brutes and who, in our public
schools and colleges, are substituting the Dar
winian hypothesis for the Bible account of man’s
creation.
First, let me call attention to the difference
between institutions and individuals. There is
a difference between the ministry and the min
ister. The ministry i3 the highest of callings,
but ministers vary all the way from the cour
ageous and saintly servants of God down to the
preacher who disgraces h s calling.
There is a difference between public service
and the public servant. Government is the first
necessity of society, but officials vary from the
patriotic statesman to the corrupt politician.
And there is a difference between law and
the lawyer. The law is the greatest of all the
professions, but the lawyers vary from the re
vered jurist to the despised pettifogger.
There is also a difference between the med
ical profession and the practicing physician.
Medicine is the most popular of the profes
sions, but doctors vary from the benefactors of
the race who discover remedies for dread dis
eases to the quack and the impostor.
And there is a difference between banking
and bankers. Banking is one of the most re
spectable of the lines of business, but bankers
vary from the trusted financier to the embez
zler who gambles on the market with the de
positors’ money.
So, likewise, there is a difference between
science and the scientist. Science is one of the
noblest of the departments of thought and has
been of incalculable value to mankind; but
scientists vary from the modest Newton, who
felt that he had gathered but a few pebbles
from the shore of the ocean of truth, down to
the egotist who invites a comparison once
used on the frontier—“the Lord’s overcoat
would not make him a vest.”
A speaker, described by a Helena (Mon
tana) paper as “a well-known scientist,” was
quoted as saying recently in a Presbyterian
church there: “Science, in bringing to life the
now generally admitted fact that this is a
world governed throughout by law, has pre-^
sented the most powerful motive to man for
goodness which has ever been urged upon him,
MORE POWERFUL, EVEN, THAN ANY
JESUS FOUND.” It is not more sacrilegious
to point out the errors of a mistaken scientist
than to criticise the faults of a minister, gov
ernment official, lawyer, physician, or banker.
The scientist must not be elevated above the
minister; the former deals with the physical
World, while the minister deals with things that
are spiritual and eternal. It is desirable that the
student should study the sciences taught in the
schools, but it is more than desirable—it is nec
essary that he shall also understand the sci
ence of HOW TO LIVE. If it were necessary to
choose between the two, It is more important
that he should know the Rock of Ages than the
age of rocks.
Religion has no quarrel with science, and
can not have, because real science is “classified
knowledge.’’ Nothing, therefore, can be scien
tific that is not true. All truth is of God,
whether found in the book of nature or in the
Book of Books; but guesses are not science;
hypotheses are not truths.
There is a wide d ifference of opinion as to
what evolution really means. Most of those
who declare that they favor it think it means
growth, like the growth of the chicken from
the egg; or development FROM WITHOUT,
like the improvement of the automobile. They
are mistaken. “Evolution” is the word used
by sc.entists to describe the hypothesis which
LINKS ALL LIFE TOGETHER AND AS
SUMES THAT ALL SPECIES ARE DEVEL
OPED FROM ONE OR A FEW GERMS OF
LIFE BY THE OPERATION OF RESIDENT
FORCES WORKING FROM WITHIN.
The Bible condemns evolution, theistic evo
lution as well as materialistic evolution, if we
can trust the judgment of Christians as to what
the Bible means. Not one in ten of those who
accept the Bible as the Word of God have ever
believed in the evolutionary hypothesis as ap
plied to man. Unless there is some rule by
which a small fraction can compel the substi
tution of their views for the views entertained
by the masses, evolution must stand condemned
as contrary to the revealed will of God.
But my purpose at this time is to show' that
science, as well as the Bible, condemns evolu
tion. The evolutionists insist that the inter
pretation of the Bible should be determined by
reason and not by popular vote of the Chris
tians. For the sake of this argument, I will
employ their logic and insist that science shall
be interpreted by reason and not by popular
vote of the scientists. If science is classified
knowledge, then we are justified in rejecting
as unscientific anything which is not established
as true. On this ground, evolution should be
rejected.
I he hypothesis has its place, whether it re
quires four syllables to express it or is ex
pressed in one syllable—by the word “guess.”
But the hypothesis is nothing more than an
hypothesis until it is proven true. Huxley said
of Darwinism: “If these questions can be an
swered in the affirmative, Mr. Darwin’s view
steps out of the ranks of hypothesis into that
of theories; but so long as the evidence ad
duced falls short of enforcing that affirmative,
so long, to our minds, the new doctrine must be
content to remain among the former .... still
an hypothesis, and not a theory of species.”
The water witch uses the hypothesis; he
guesses that the water can be found in a certain
place, and bores a hole to prove it; but the
hole is not a w611 until he finds water The
prospector uses the hypothesis; he guesses that
there is ore at a certain point on a mountain
side, and digs a pit to prove it; but the pit is
not a mine until he finds the precious metals.
So with the lawyer; he tries his case upon
an hypothesis; but the decisions of the court
show that at least half of these hypotheses are
wrong. A judge sometimes says to a young
lawyer: “That is a good speech, and I will
remember it if we ever have a case that fits it.”
His hypothesis was wrong. The doctor, the
banker, and the business man are continually
putting forth hypotheses, but they do not al
ways work out successfully.
So with the scientist. It is a part of his
business—guessing is his middle name. He
formulates an hypothesis and then tries to
prove it; but most of the hypotheses advanced
by scientists in the name of science have been
abandoned as erroneous. Unproven hypotheses
may serve as playthings for the imaginative,
but they are of no practical value until they
are shown to be true.
Take evolution, for instance. It did not
originate with Darwin nor with his grand
father. People have been guessing as to the
origin of man as far back as there have been
means of recording guesses. There is enough
physical similarity between man and the brutes
about him—although they are separated by in
finite distance—to suggest to some ancients
the POSSIBILITY of a common ancestry. The
Greeks speculated on this, as did also the Rom
ans. No one is able to award the booby prize
for such wild guessing, because it is impossi
ble to ascertain with certainty who first in
quired whether he might be a blood relative of
the brutes. Darwin’s connection with this hy
pothesis' is due not to origination of the idea,
but to the reasons which he advanced in sup
port of the hypothesis.
Darwin imagined that species came by slow
and gradual change, one from another, and
suggested two so-called laws or explanations
which he deemed sufficient to account for the
orig.n of and change in species. These two laws
or explanations were defined as “sexual selec
tion'’ and “natural selection." Whatever lie
could not explain by one, he tried to explain by
the other. Sexual selection has been laughed
out of the classroom, and natural selection is
being discredited as its insufficiency fa being
more and more disclosed. John Burrows, the
great naturalist, announced his dissent from this
in an article published just before his death.
In discuss ng evolution as applied to man, I
have used “evolution" and “Darwinism" as
synonymous terms, because DARWIN IS THE
ONLY SCWNTIST WHO HAS EVER OUT
LINED A FAMILY TREE EXTENDING FROM
THE LOWEST FORMS OF LIFE TO MAN
AND SECURED FOR IT THE SUPPORT OF
ANY CONSIDERABLE NUMBER OF EVOLU
TIONISTS.
It is true that most of the evolutionists now
discard Darwin’s family tree and reject his so
called laws or explanations, but they cling to
his conclusions—without anything whatever to
support them. They are, therefore, more un
reasonable than Darwin.
The whole case in favor of evolution is based
on physical resemblances. Those who believe
in the evolutionary hypothesis reject the Mosaic
account of man’s creation by separate act of the
Almighty and give him a jungle ancestry, but
they offer only circumstantial evidence in sup
port of their speculation.
Darwin was much impressed by the similarity
in appearance between man and the simians. On
pages 22 0 and 221, chapter vi., “Descent of
Man,” second edition, he says: “The Simiada*
then branched off into two great stems, the New
World and the Old World monkeys, and from
the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder
and glory of the universe, proceeded.”
Most scientists now reject Darwin’s monkey
gorilla-ape line of descent and argue that man
came by some other imaginary limb of the im
aginary tree to which evolutionists attempt to
trace all living things. The new limb to which
they are trying to attach man’s ancestry has
disappeared entirely; not a fragment remains
so far as they have been able to disco-ver, be
tween man and the imaginary tree. When they
have a house cleaning and sweep out all the
stuffed “ape-men” and “men-apes” that they
have used in the museums to prove man’s de
scent from the simian line, they will be wholly
at a loss for missing links to connect man wi‘h
the brute creation. Some contend that the dog
bears greater resemblance to man than the ape,
while some see in the ass circumstantial evi
dence of a kinshp nearer than any that relates
man to either the canine or the monkey lines.
The trouble with circumstantial evidence is
that one FACT will overthrow any amount of
it. Let us suppose, for instance, that a man is
accused of murder, and that ten witnesses—or,
for that matter, a hundred, a thousand, or a
million—testify to resemblances. If the defend
ant can prove that he was not within a thou
sand miles of the place when the crime was cetm
mitted, that one fact will outweigh all the re
semblances, to which witnesses may have testi
fied, between him and the perpetrator of the
crime.
The evolutionists have attempted to prove by
circumstantial evidences (resemblances) that
man is descended from the brute. No one will
deny that they have labored industriously. Men
who would not cross the street to save a soul
have traveled around the world in search of
skeletons. If they find a stray tooth in a gravel
pit, they hold a conclave and fashion a crea
ture such as they suppose the possessor of the
tooth to have been, and then they shout deri
sively at Moses. If they find a skull, or even a
piece of a skull, they summon the geologists,
the biologists, the anthropologists, the paleon
tologists, the fossilologists, the archeologists, the
psychologists, and all the other experts whom
they regard as authorities and hold a post
mortem examination. Sitting as a coroner’s jury,
they solemnly declare that the Bible account of
man’s creation is a lie.
All of these resemblances and all this cir
cumstantial evidence are overthrown by ONE
SINGLE, INDISPUTABLE FACT—namely, that
NO SPECIES HAS EVER BEEN TRACED TO
ANOTHER SPECIES. With more than a mil
lion species (Darwin estimated the number at
between two and three millions) to furnish
proof, if there were any proof, they have so far
failed to find one instance in which they can