An Excerpt From A Speech Never Given

William Jennings Bryan wrote an eloquent closing remarks speech for the Scopes trial. Though he sometimes makes logical assumptions (which he shared with most people then) to support his argument, he makes some good points. This is one.

The evolutionist does not undertake to tell us how protozoa, moved by interior and resident forces, sent life up through all the various species, and cannot prove that there was actually any such compelling power at all. And yet, the school children are asked to accept their guesses and build a philosophy of life upon them. If it were not so serious a matter, one might be tempted to speculate upon the various degrees of relationship that, according to evolutionists, exist between man and other forms of life. It might require some very nice calculation to determine at what degree of relationship the killing of a relative ceases to be murder and the eating of one's kin ceases to be cannibalism.

— William Jennings Bryan