A Closing Statement from W. J. Bryan

"Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of the storm-tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellow men on a single plane--the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times as bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world."

That is the opening for a closing statement that Bryan prepared, but never actually delivered, for the trial of John Scopes on the charge of illegally teaching the theory of evolution.

You can read the full summation here.

That isn't the somewat cartoonish "Brady" of a play very loosely based on the actual event. That is the real William Jennings Bryan and part of his reaction to the circumstances that had brought him to that courtroom.

The first thing that strikes me is that Bryan made what seems the common mistake of conflating science with engineering. Of course, engineers (whether building bridges, improving surgical implements, or mixing gases to produce the best battlefield poison) make use of the best science known to them, but they are engaged in something different in kind.

If you make that distinction, then the underlying claim, "science has done bad things to us, so let's not teach evolution in schools" seems transparently silly.