Abstract
I AM sure that, without help from me, the citizens of the United States are quite capable of suppressing their own obscurantists. Theirs is not the country to go back on the principle of the freedom of thought. Hence I would excuse myself from testifying to the doctrine of organic evolution, and incidentally from having to consider which particular version of it I am prepared to support at the present moment. Rather I would remind my scientific brethren over the water, lest they take the matter too seriously, and hold themselves to be shamed in the face of the world, that there are plenty of worthy folk over here just as narrow in their outlook. I have myself been invited to lecture on anthropology to a denominational congress—held, I am glad to say, not in the British Isles but in a neighbouring country—on condition that nothing should be said about evolution. For the rest, I have had to do at Oxford with Rhodes scholars coming from the obscurantist States, and have found them apparently as well educated as the rest; whence it is perhaps to be inferred that the rising generation will not limit the circuit of their musings to suit the antiquated prejudices of their elders.
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R. R. Marett, D.Sc., Fellow, Tutor, and Dean of Exeter College, Oxford. Nature 116, 105 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/116105a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/116105a0