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Homo Neanderthalensis

by H.L. Mencken

(The Baltimore Evening Sun, June 29, 1925)

I

Such obscenities as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee
evolutionist, if they serve no other purpose, at least call attention
dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very
narrowly dispersed. It is common to assume that human progress affects
everyone -- that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more
than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized.
This assumption is quite erroneous. The men of the educated minority,
no doubt, know more than their predecessors, and of some of them,
perhaps, it may be said that they are more civilized -- though I
should not like to be put to giving names -- but the great masses of
men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was
at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they
are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is
worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire
among them to increase their knowledge.

Such immortal vermin, true enough, get their share of the fruits of
human progress, and so they may be said, in a way, to have their part
in it. The most ignorant man, when he is ill, may enjoy whatever boons
and usufructs modern medicine may offer -- that is, provided he is too
poor to choose his own doctor. He is free, if he wants to, to take a
bath. The literature of the world is at his disposal in public
libraries. He may look at works of art. He may hear good music. He has
at hand a thousand devices for making life less wearisome and more
tolerable: the telephone, railroads, bichloride tablets, newspapers,
sewers, correspondence schools, delicatessen. But he had no more to do
with bringing these things into the world than the horned cattle in the
fields, and he does no more to increase them today than the birds of
the air.

On the contrary, he is generally against them, and sometimes with
immense violence. Every step in human progress, from the first feeble
stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority
of men. Every valuable thing that has been added to the store of man's
possessions has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by
them when they had the power. They have fought every new truth ever
heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their
hands.

II