July 1,19251

The Nation

21

"

In Tennessee
By H. L. MENCKEN

LWAYS, inthisgreat
republic,controversies depart
swiftly fromtheiroriginaltermsand
plungeinto
irrelevancies andfalse pretenses.Thecase
of prohibition
issalient.
Who recalls theoptimistic
daysbefore
the
Eighteenth Amendment, and the loftyprognostications of
the dry mullahs, clerical and lay? Prohibition, we were told,
would empty the jails, reduce the tax rate, abolish poverty,
and put an end t o political corruption. Today even the Prohibitionists kno,w better, and so they
begin t o grow discreetly silent upon
thematter.Instead,they
come forward
with
a n entirely new Holy
Cause. What began a s acampaign
f o r Babbitt's
a
Utopia
becomes
transformedinto
mystical
a
campaign for Law Enforcement. Prohibition is a grotesque failure, but the
A transcendental
fightmust goon.
motive takes the place of a practical
motive. One categoricalimperative
goes out and another comes in.
So, now, in Tennessee, where a
rural pedagogue stands arraignedbefore
his
peers for violating the
school law. At bottom, a quite simple business.
The
hinds
of the
State,
desiring
to
prepare
their
young forlifethere,set
up public
schools. To manthose schools they
H. L.
employ pedagogues. To guidethose
pedagogues they lay down rules prescribing what is t o be
taughtandwhatisnotto
be taught. Why not, indeed?
the same custom
How could it be otherwise?Precisely
prevails everywhere else in the world, wherever there are
schools a t all. Behindevery
school everheard
of there
is a definite concept of its purpose-of
the sort of equipment itisto
giveto
its pupils. It cannot conceivably
teach everything; it must confine itself by sheer necessity to teaching what
will be of the greatest utility, culturalor practical,' tothe youthactually
in hand. Well,
t o the son of a Tenwhat could be of greaterutility
nessee mountaineer than an education making him a good
Tennesseean,content
withhisfather,
at peace withhis
neighbors, dutifultothe
local religion, and docile under
the local mores?
That is all the Tennessee anti-evolutiton law seeks to
accomplish. It differs from other regulations of the same
s o r t only totheextentthat
Tennesseediffers fromthe
rest of the world. The State, t o a degree that should be
Its
gratifying,has escaped the nationalstandardization.
peopleshow a character that is immensely different from
the character of, say, New Yorkers or Californians.They
retain, amongother things,the anthropomorphicreligion
of an elder day. They do notprofess it; they actually
believe in it. The Old Testament, t o them, is not a mere
sacerdfotalwhizz-bang, t o be read for its pornography ; it is
an authoritative history, and the transactions
recorded in
it are as true as the story of Barbara Frietchie, or that

of Washingtonand the cherrytree,orthat

of thelate
Woodro,w's struggle to keep us out of the war. So crepting the sacred narrative, they desire that
i t be taught to
their children, and any doctrine that makes game of it is
immensely offensive t o them. When such a doctrine, despitetheirprotests,is
actually taught,they
proceed to
put it down by force.
Is that procedure singular? I don't think it is. It is
adopted everywhere, the instant the
prevailingnotions,whetherreal
or
false, are challenged. Suppose a
school teacherin NewYorkbegan
entertaining his pupils with the case
againstthe
Jews, or againstthe
Pope. Suppose teacher
a
in Vermont essayed to argue that the late
Confederate States were right,as
thousands of perfectly sane and intelligentpersons
believe-that
Lee
wasadefender
of the Constitution
andGrant a traitor t o it. Suppose
a teacher in Kansas taught that prolii'bition was evil, or a teacherin
it wasvirtuous.
New Jerseythat
But I need not pile up suppositions.
The evidence of what happens to
teacher
was
such a contumacious
spread before u s copiously during
thelateuproarabout
Bolsheviks.
And i t wasnot in rural Tennessee
but in the great cultural centers which now laugh at Tennessee that punishments came most swiftly, and were most
but New York City that
barbarous. It wasnotDayton
cashieredteachers for protesting against the
obviouslies
of the State Department.
Yet now we a r e asked t o believe that some mysterious
and vastly important principle is a t stake a t Dayton-that
the conviction of Professor Scopes will strike a deadly blow
at enlightenmentand bring down freedom to sorrow and
shame. Tell it to the marines ! No; principle is a t stake at
Dayton save the principle that school teachers, like plumbers, should stick t o the job that is set before them, and
not go roving about the house, breaking windows, raiding
the cellar, and demoralizing the children.Theissue
of
free speech is quiteirrelevant.
When a pedagoguetakes
hisoath ofoffice,
he renounceshis right t o free speech
colonel inthe
quite a s certainly a s a bishop does, or
army,or an editorial writer on a newspaper. He becomes
a paid propagandist of certain definite doctrines and attitudes,mainlydetermined
specifically andin advance, and
everytimehe
departs from them deliberately he deliberately swindles his employers.
What ails Mr. Scopes, and many like him, is that they
have been filled withsubversiveideasbyspecialistsin
human l+berty, of whom I have the honor to be one. Such
specialists, confronted by the New York cases, saw a chance
to make political capital out of them, nand did so with great
effect. I was certainlynot backward inthat enterprise.

The Nation

22
.L

[Vol. 121,No. 3130

~~

Theliars of theStateDepartmentwerefair
game, and
anystickis
good enough
,beata
dog with.Evena
pedagogue, seized firmly by the legs,makes an effective
shillelagh. ( I have used, in my time, yet worse : a congressman, a psychiatrist, a birth controller to maul an
archbishop.) Unluckily, some of the pedagogues mistook
the purpose of the operation. They came out of it full of
a delusion that they were apostles of liberty, of the search
for knowledge, of enlightenment.Theyhavebeenworrying and exasperating their employers ever since.
I believe it must beplain that they are wrong,and
that their employers, by anecessaryinference,
are right.
A pedagogue, properly so called-and a high-school teacher
surelynot a
in a country town is properly so called-is
searcher for knowledge. His, job in the wodld is simply to
pass on what has been chosen and approved by his superiors.
In the whole history of the world no such pedagogue
has
ever actuallyincreased the sum of human knowledge. His
training unfits him for it; moreover, he would not be a
pedagogue if he had either the taste or the capacity f o r it.
He is aworkingman,notathinker.
When he speaks, his
employers speak. Whathesayshasbehind
i t all the

authority of the community. Ifhe would be true t o his

oath he must bevery carefulto saynothing that is in
violation of the communal rnures, 6he communal magic, tlie
communal notion of the good, the beautiful, and the true.
Here, I repeat, I speak of the pedagogue, and use the
word in its s t r i c t s e n s e t h a t is, I speak of the fellow
whose sole j o b is teaching. Men of great learning, men
genuinely know something, men who haveaugmented the
store of human knowledge-such men, in their leisure, may
an apprentice.But
he
also teach. Themastermaytake
does notseekapprentices
in the hilltowns of Tennessee,
o r even on theEast Side of NewYork.
He does not
waste himself upon children whose fate it will be, when they
grow up, t o become Rotarians o r Methodist deacons, bootleggers or moonshiners. He looks for- his apprentices in the
minority that has somehow escaped that fate-that has, by
of
some act of God, survived thedreadfulministrations
sohool-teachers. To this minority he may submit his doubts
as well as his certainties. He may present what is dubi,ous
and of evil report along with what is
official, and hence
good. He may be wholly himself, Liberty of teaching begins where teaching ends.

The United States and the Artist

By

NES first light thought was: What United States?

NewYork-or
the Middle West-or Pasadena? It
must be difficult for an artist to function in
New York, with
so few hours and
much food; and still more difficult in
Calif,ornia, with all the scenery and the leisure. If were
an artist in the United States, I should work in the Middle
(not
West, with dashes t o New York for briefvacations
for stimulus)andwith
occasional golden draggingdays
a relationshipwithactual
across the desert,toestablish
space. And when I came home again, from either direction,
my town would say: I suppose you go away to get points,
and come back and write them up?
It should be a small Western town, with a lawn running down to a river, a riverintentnot
t o saydistrait.
On-theothershorethere
should be
only green, with a f a r brow of hills.
At noon one could go out and lie in
the sun, and stay there through the
whole afternoon. If winter came, the
lawn and the farther shore would be
white,and the whiteness would not
darken ; and ones window would have
a long chairand aprimrose.
.
Nothing would happen. Morning
would be f o u r hours long, sunny or in
the ancientexpressionism
of cloudy
light. A squirrel, the Westminster
clock, a chickadee or a grosbeak, and
the wheels o r therunners under a
passing load of straw would offer the
principal sounds. Afternoon would
end when it chose, in a walkacross
the river, the levee and the open fields
being not a .ten minute distance, the
white o r the green intimately at hand.
ZONA
The evening would be for reading o r

forwriting o r for friends. All thedays would be the

same. One wouldnt be
invited
to lunch &because one
doesnt playbridge.
One wouldnt be invitedtodinner
because one isntmarried.
Ones evening would be intact
because one doesnt dance. But an intimate touch with the
town would *beheld in other ways-by school, park, library,
and many a heafih. Above all, by children.
Can an artist exist and function freely in the United
States?
think that he can do so if he knows where and
how.
Unless hefalls upon a place o r a period of cliques,
extolling new conformities and their resulting classification,
the artist leadsamong men the loneliest life of them all.
being
This he must do, because his work is as salitary
born-more
so, when you
come
to
think of it. And i t is truethatin
whatevercountry ,he works, even in
one long
ridden
by prejudice and
standardization,his
four walls and
his tools are all that he needs-during
his actual hours of creation; and that
intheripestnationasinthemost
callow, while he is at ,work, the artist
is independent of the state. But it is
when he emerges from that room and
becomes again a social being that he
sighs to think-if he does-of the disabilities of hiscountry a s a garden
forhis growth. It is thenthat he
fears its effect-if he does fear-upon
his exalted hours of creation.
A former sighfor the lack of adequatecriticismhe
need no
longer
breathe.Syntheticcriticismarrived
The
last
ten
among us abruptly.
years,having
seen therise
of the