them a hearing. "Half the battle is in catching the
Speaker's eye," said Thomas Brackett Reed; and a John the Baptist to
prepare the way is always necessary. Without Coleridge to quietly ignore
the question of precedent, and refuse to accept a thing without proof, and
ask eternally and yet again, "How do you know?" Charles Darwin with his
"Origin of Species" would have been laughed out of court. Or probably had
Darwin been persistent we would have consigned him to the stocks, burned
his book in the public square, and with the aid of logical thumbscrews
made him recant.

Even as it was, the gibes and guffaws of the press and pulpit came near
drowning the modest, moderate voice of Darwin; and for a score of years,
his reputation as a scientist seemed to be trembling in the balance. Yet
today the man who would seriously attempt in an educated assembly to throw
obloquy upon the doctrine of Evolution and the name of Charles Darwin
would find himself speedily listed with Brudder Jasper of Richmond,
Virginia. The Church now, everywhere, has its Drummonds, who build on
Darwin and use his citations as proof; and Drummond merely expressed what
the many believe--no more.

The man who has dared to think for himself and voiced his thought--the
emancipated man--has been as one in a million. What usually passes for
thought is only the repetition of things we have heard or been told. We
memorize, repeat by rote and call it thought.

With the Church and State in control of food and clothes, and with spears,
clubs, knives and guns ready to suppress whatsoever seemed dangerous to
their stability, it is a miracle that men have ever improved on
anything--for progress has been for centuries a perilous performance. To
question a priest was blasphemy. To reason with a judge was heinous. To
think and decide for yourself was to invite torture and death.

And all this was very natural, simply because the superior class who
monopolized the good things of earth were obliged, in order to enslave and
tax men, to make them believe that their power was derived from God. And
thus was taught the "divine right of kings," the duty of submission, the
necessity of belief and the sinfulness of doubt. The source of all
knowledge was declared to be a book, and the right of interpretation of
this book was given to one class alone--those who sided with and were a
part of the Superior Class.

The reason the race has progressed so slowly is because the strong,