een opposed on the same grounds; that is, that
these are against the teachings of the Christian Church. And how many
Galileos, Brunos, and Darwins, and other would-be benefactors to the
human race have died mute because of this opposition and fear of
persecution by the Church?

In 1877, an eminent French Catholic physician, Dr. Constantin James,
published an elaborate answer to Darwin's book. He called it, "On
Darwinism, or the Ape Man." A copy was sent to Pope Pius IX, who was so
pleased with it that he sent the author a reply in which he stated that
it "refutes so well the aberrations of Darwinism, a system which is
repugnant at once to history, to the traditions of all peoples, to exact
science, to observed facts, and even to reason itself, would seem to
need no refutation did not alienation from God and the leaning toward
materialism, due to depravity, eagerly seek support in all this tissue
of fables."

The Protestant clergy were no less vigorous in their opposition. In our
own country it was opposed by Dr. Noah Porter, president of Yale
College, and most bitterly by the Rev. Dr. Hodge and the Rev. Dr.
Duffield, both leading authorities at Princeton University.

Fundamentalism in the United States furnished the spectacle of the
trial, in 1925, of a school teacher named Scopes, for teaching the
theory of evolution. Dayton, Tennessee, became the laughingstock of the
educated world, and the derision with which this effort to obstruct
knowledge at this late date was met with by the comments of the press in
this country and abroad is at least encouraging. But it is an excellent
example of what effect religious obscurantism may exert in backward
sections of our country.

Dr. Max Carl Otto, considering the implications of evolution, calls
attention to the following: "Take the evolution of living forms. The
more we learn about biological history the clearer it becomes that the
process has been, from the human point of view, incredibly bungling and
wasteful. There have been futile experiments without number; highly
successful achievements have been thrown aside; one type of life after
another has arisen and has pushed up a blind alley to extinction. If
there is a God whose method has been Evolution, then seemingly his
slogan was 'We'll fight it out along this line if it takes a billennium'
but, unlike Grant, he has always surrendered. In this maelstrom, the
human species, as Thomas Huxley said--'plashed and floundered a