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1、The Trial That Rocked the World John Scopes 目的/重点Aims of teaching1. the comprehension of the text and the mastery of the important language points2. the paraphrase of certain complicated or difficult sentences3. the enlargement of the students vocabulary4. the familiarization with the styles of comp
2、osition and devices of figuration 课文内容The Trial That Rocked the World John Scopes A buzz ran through the crowd as I took my place in the packed court on thatsweltering July day in 1925. The counsel for my defence was the famous criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. Leading counsel for theprosecution was
3、William Jennings Bryan, thesilver-tongued orator , three times Democraticnominee for President of the United States, and leader of the fundamentalist movement that had brought about my trial.A few weeks before I had been an unknown school-teacher in Dayton, a little town in the mountains of Tennesse
4、e. Now I was involved in a trial reported the world over. Seated in court, ready to testify on my behalf, were a dozen distinguished professors and scientists, led by Professor Kirtley Mather of Harvard University. More than 100 reporters were on hand, and even radio announcer s, who for the first t
5、ime in history were to broadcast a jurytrial. Dont worry, son, well show them a few tricks, Darrow had whispered throwing a reassuring arm round my shoulder as we were waiting for the court to open.The case had eruptedround my head not long after I arrived in Dayton as science master and football co
6、ach at the secondary school. For a number of years a clash had been building up between the fundamentalists and the modernists. The fundamentalists adhered to a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. The modernists, on the other hand, accepted the theory advanced by Charles Darwin - that all a
7、nimal life, including monkeys and men, had evolved from a common ancestor.Fundamentalism was strong in Tennessee, and the state legislature had recently passed a law prohibiting the teaching of any theory that denies the story of creation as taught in the Bible. The new law was aimed squarely at Dar
8、wins theory of evolution. An engineer, George Rappelyea, used to argue with the local people against the law. During one such argument, Rappelyea said that nobody could teach biology without teaching evolution. Since I had been teaching biology, I was sent for.Rappelyea is right, I told them.Then yo
9、u have been violating the law, one of them Said.So has every other teacher, I replied. Evolution is explained in Hunters Civic Biology, and thats our textbook. Rappelyea then made a suggestion. Lets take this thing to court, he said, and test the legalityof it.When I was indictedon May 7, no one, le
10、ast of all I, anticipatedthat my case would snowball into one of the most famous trials in U. S. history. The American Civil Liberties Union announced that it would take my case to the U. S Supreme Court if necessary to establish that a teacher may tell the truth without being sent to jail. Then Bry
11、an volunteered to assist the state in prosecuting me. Immediately the renownedlawyer Clarence Darrow offered his services to defend me. Ironically, I had not known Darrow before my trial but I had met Bryan when he had given a talk at my university. I admired him, although I did not agree with his v
12、iews.By the time the trial began on July 10, our town of 1,500 people had taken on a circusatmosphere. The buildings along the main street were festoonedwith banners. The streets around the three-storey red brick law court sproutedwithricketystands selling hot dogs, religious books and watermelons.E
13、vangelists set up tents to exhortthe passersby. People from the surrounding hills, mostly fundamentalists, arrived to cheer Bryan against the infidel outsiders Among them was John Butler, who had drawn up the anti-evolution law. Butler was a 49-year-old farmer who before his election had never been
14、out of his native county.The presiding judge was John Raulston, a florid-faced man who announced: Im just a reglar mountaineer jedge. Bryan, ageing and paunchy , was assisted in his prosecution by his son, also a lawyer, and Tennessees brilliant young attorney-general, Tom Stewart. Besides the shrew
15、d 68-year-old Darrow, my counsel included the handsome andmagnetic Dudley Field Malone, 43, and Arthur Garfield Hays, quiet, scholarly and steeped in the law. In a trial in which religion played a key role, Darrow was an agnostic, Malone a Catholicand Hays a Jew. My father had come from Kentucky to
16、be with me for the trial.The judge called for a local minister to open the session with prayer, and the trial got under way. Of the 12 jurors, three had never read any book except the Bible. One couldnt read. As my father growled, Thats one hell of a jury!After the preliminary sparring over legaliti
17、es, Darrow got up to make his opening statement. My friend the attorney-general says that John Scopes knows what he is here for, Darrow drawled. I know what he is here for, too. He is here because ignorance andbigotryare , and it is a mighty strong combination.Darrow walked slowly round the baking c
18、ourt. Today it is the teachers, he continued, and tomorrow the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until we are marching backwards to the glorious age of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted faggots to burn the men wh
19、o dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and Culture to the human mind. That damned infidel, a woman whispered loudly as he finished his address.The following day the prosecution began calling wit-nesses against me. Two of my pupils testified, grinning shyly at me, that I had taught them
20、evolution, but added that they had not been contaminated by the experience. Howard Morgan, a bright lad of 14, testified that I had taught that man was a mammal like cows, horses, dogs and cats.He didnt say a cat was the same as a man? Darrow asked.No, sir, the youngster said. He said man had reason
21、ing power.There is some doubt about that, Darrow snorted.After the evidence was completed, Bryan rose to address the jury. The issue was simple, he declared The Christian believes that man came from above. The evolutionist believes that he must have come from below. The spectators chuckled and Bryan
22、 warmed to his work. In one hand he brandished a biology text as he denounced the scientists who had come to Dayton to testify for the defence.The Bible, he thundered in his sonorous organ tones, is not going to be driven out of this court by experts who come hundreds of miles to testify that they c
23、an reconcile evolution, with its ancestors in the jungle, with man made by God in His image and put here for His purpose as par t of a divine plan.As he finished, jaw out-thrust, eyes flashing, the audience burst intoapplauseand shouts of Amen. Yet something was lacking. Gone was the fierce fervour
24、of the days when Bryan had swept the political arena like a prairie fire. The crowd seemed to feel that their champion had notscorched the infidels with the hot breath of his oratoryas he should have. Dudley Field Malone popped up to reply. Mr. Bryan is not the only one who has the right to speak fo
25、r the Bible, he observed. There are other people in this country who have given up their whole lives to God and religion. Mr. Bryan, with passionate spirit and enthusiasm, has given post of his life to politics. Bryan sipped from a jug of water as Malones voice grew in volume. He appealed for intell
26、ectual freedom, and accused Bryan of calling for a duelto the death between science and religion.There is never a duel with the truth, he roared. The truth always wins - and we are not afraid of it. The truth does not need Mr. Bryan. The truth is eternal, immortal and needs no human agency to suppor
27、t it! When Malone finished there was a momentary hush. Then the court broke into a storm of applause that surpassed that for Bryan. But although Malone had won the oratorical duel with Bryan, the judge ruled against permitting the scientists to testify for the defence.When the court adjourned, we fo
28、und Daytons streets swarming with strangers. Hawkerscried their wares on every corner. One shop announced: DARWIN IS RIGHT INSIDE. (This was J. R. Darwins everything to Wear Store.) One entrepreneur rented a shop window to display an ape. Spectators paid to gaze at it and ponderwhether they might be
29、 related.The poor brute cowered in a corner with his hands over his eyes, ” a reporter noted, afraid it might be true. H. L. Mencken wrote sulphurous dispatchessitting in his Pants with a tan blowing on him, and there was talk of running him out of town for referring to the local citizenry as yokels
30、 . Twenty-two telegraphists were sending out 165 000 words a day on the trial.Because of the heat and a fear that the old courts floor might collapse, under the weight of the throng, the trial was resumed outside under the maples. More than 2 000 spectators sat on wooden benches or squattedon the gr
31、ass, perched on the tops of parked cars or gawkedfrom windows.Then came the climax of the trial. Because of the wording of the anti-evolution law, the prosecution was forced to take the position that the Bible must be interpreted literally. Now Darrow sprang his trump card by calling Bryan as a witn
32、ess for the defence. The judge looked startled. We are calling him as an expert on the Bible, Darrow said. His reputation as an authority on Scripture is recognized throughout the world.Bryan was suspicious of the wily Darrow, yet he could not refuse the challenge. For year s he had lectured and wri
33、tten on the Bible. He had campaigned against Darwinism in Tennessee even before passage of the anti-evolution law. Resolutely he strode to the stand, carrying a palm fan like a sword to repel his enemies.Under Darrows quiet questioning he acknowledged believing the Bible literally, and the crowd pun
34、ctuated his defiant replies with fervent Amens.Darrow read from Genesis: And the evening and the morning were the first day. Then he asked Bryan if he believed that the sun was created on the fourth day. Bryan said that he did.How could there have been a morning and evening with-out any sun? Darrow
35、enquired.Bryan mopped his bald dome in silence. There were sniggers from the crowd, even among the faithful. Darrow twirledhis spectacles as he pursued the questioning. He asked if Bryan believed literally in the story of Eve. Bryan answered in the affirmative.And you believe that God punished the s
36、erpent by condemning snakes for ever after to crawl upon their bellies?I believe that.Well, have you any idea how the snake went before that time?The crowd laughed, and Bryan turned livid. His voice rose and the fan in his hand shook in anger.Your honor, he said. I will answer all Mr. Darrows questi
37、ons at once. I want the world to know that this man who does not believe in God is using a Tennessee court to cast slurs on Him.I object to that statement,” Darrow shouted. “ I am examining you on your tool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.The judge used his gavelto quell the hu
38、bbuband adjourned court until next day.Bryan stood forlornly alone. My heart went out to the old warrior as spectator s pushed by him to shake Darrows hand.The jury were asked to consider their verdict at noon the following day. The jurymen retired to a corner of the lawn and whispered for just nine
39、 minutes. The verdict was guilty. I was fined 100 dollars and costs.Dudley Field Malone called my conviction a victorious defeat. A few southern papers, loyal to their faded champion, hailed it as a victory for Bryan. But Bryan, sad and exhausted, died in Dayton two days after the trial.I was offere
40、d my teaching job back but I declined. Some of the professors who had come to testify on my be-half arranged a scholarship for me at the University of Chicago so that I could pursue the study of science. Later I became a geologist for an oil company.Not long ago I went back to Dayton for the first t
41、ime since my trial 37 years ago. The little town looked much the same to me. But now there is a William Jennings Bryan University on a hill-top over looking the valley.There were other changes, too. Evolution is taught in Tennessee, though the law under which I was convicted is still on the books. T
42、he oratorial storm that Clarence Darrow and Dudley Field Malone blew up in the little court in Dayton swept like a fresh wind through the schools and legislative offices of the United States, bringing in its wake a new climate of intellectual and academic freedom that has grown with the passing year
43、s. (from Readers Digest, July, 1962) NOTES1) John Scopes: John Scopes is the last surviving principal of the famous Tennessee Monkey Trial of 1925. The man whose name became synonymous with the teaching of evolution in American schools recalls here highlights of the court drama which inspired the fi
44、lm Inherit the Wind.2) fundamentalism: religous beliefs based on a literal interpretation of everything in the Bible and regarded as fundamental to Christian faith and morals3) Old Testament: The Christian Bible is divided into two sections: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament
45、, composed of 39 books, is the name given by Christians to the Holy Scripture of Judaism. The New Testament contains the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and his follower.4) Darwin: Charles Darwin (1809-82), English naturalist and biologist; originator of the theory of mans evolution by natural se
46、lection; his best known works, Origin of Species (1859), Descent of Man (1871)5) American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ): an organization founded by Roger Baldwin and others in New York City in 1920 to champion the rights of man set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of th
47、e United States. To attain its goals the ACLU issues public statements, organizes protests, initiates test cases in the law courts, and in various ways becomes actively involved in a broad variety of issues related to civil liberties.6) U. S. Supreme Court: the highest Federal court, consisting of n
48、ine judges; the highest and final judicial authority in the country; at times overriding Congress in pronouncing upon the constitutionality of laws7) Im jist a reglar mountaineer jedge: a variety of nonstandard American pronunciation for Im just a regular mountaineer judge8) (state) attorney-general: the chief law officer and representative in legal matters of a state governments (US. ) Attorney-General is the head of the United States Department of Justice and member of the Presidents Cabinet.9)