Begins his first dispatch on the Scopes trial this way: Such obscenities as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist. if they serve no other purpose. at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment. among mankind. is very narrowly dispersed. It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone– that even the dullest man. in these bright days. knows more than any man of. say. the Eighteenth Century. and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The men of the educated minority.
Know more than their predecessors
and of soSomen. even in this inspired republic. are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant. they are dishonest. they are cowardly. they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge. (“Homo Neanderthalensis.” The Baltimore Evening Sun. 1925.6.29)
He continues in the same dispatch: are not hard to discern. He hates it because it is complex—because it puts an unbearable burden phone number list upon his meager capacity for taking in ideas. Thus his search is always for short cuts. All superstitions are such short cuts. Their aim is to make the unintelligible simple. and even obvious.
What seem to be higher levels
No man who has not had a long and arduous education can understand even the most elementary concepts of modern pathology. But even a hind at the plow can grasp the theory of chiropractic in two lessons. Hence the vast popularity of chiropractic among the submerged—and of osteopathy. Christian Science and other such quackeries with it. They are idiotic. but they are simple—and every man prefers what he can understand to why every dentist needs to have a website with an article section what puzzles and dismays him.
The popularity of Fundamentalism among the inferior orders of men is explicable in exactly the same way. The cosmogonies that educated men toy with are all inordinately complex. To comprehend their veriest outlines requires an immense stock of knowledge.
It would be as vain to try to teach to peasants
To the city proletariat as it would be to try to teach them to streptococci. But the cosmogony of Genesis is so simple that even a lack data yokel can grasp it. It is set forth in a few phrases. It offers. to the ignorant man. the irresistible reasonableness of the nonsensical. So he accepts it with loud hosannas. and has one more excuse for hating his betters.