29 
EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 
in jeopardy. They seem to think it more 
blessed to believe something they received at 
second hand than to investigate and know the 
truth. With them it’s “Believe so and so; open 
your mouths like young mocking-birds and 
swallow it, smack your lips and call it good.” 
For people of that mental type to tell us to 
think—why, that is never thought of. 
This forcing one to subscribe to a doctrine 
through fear, or to accept an idea on authority, 
belongs to the medieval : ge. And we resent it 
—we whose minds have not been altogether 
shaped by the kingly, priestly authority of five 
hundred years ago. We say, “Give us the evi¬ 
dences of your belief; if they are sufficient we 
cannot help believing. Let us meet in fair dis¬ 
cussion and compare evidences. Drop your in¬ 
tolerance. Let your idea stand or fall on its 
merits—that’s all we ask of ours. Let the law 
of natural selection have a chance to operate.” 
Not belief, but truth, is the one essential, and 
when discussion reveals the evidence support¬ 
ing it belief is attracted to it like steel filings 
to a magnet. 0 ye of little faith, doubt not 
that in a struggle for existence between truth 
and error the fittest, that is, truth, will sur¬ 
vive and error be eliminated. 
Truth crushed to earth will rise again— 
The eternal years are hers—- 
While Error, wounded, writhes in pain 
And dies among her worshippers. 
“A lie on the throne is a lie, still, and truth 
in a dungeon is truth, still; and a lie on the 
throne is on the way to defeat, and truth in a 
dungeon is on the way to victory.” 
