,transcriber's ,note3 ,italics are enclosed in underscores4 ,additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook4 ,,mr4 ,,belloc ,,still ,,objects ,,mr4 ,,belloc ,,still ,,objects ,,to ,,mr4 ,,wells',s 8,,outline ,,of ,,history0 ,,by ,,hilaire ,,belloc ,illustration3 ,,ecclesiastical 99 ,,supply 99 ,,association ,e 99 ,s 99 ,a ,,publishers ,,and ,,importers #cbh-ccj ,,stockton ,,st4 ,,san ,,francisco1 ,,cal4 #aibg ,made and ,printed in ,great ,britain at ,the ,mayflower ,press1 ,plymouth4 ,william ,brendon ,son1 ,ltd4 ,,contents ,,page ,,introduction vii ,i4 ,,mr4 ,,wells',s ,,general ,,grievances #a ,,ii4 ,,mr4 ,,wells ,,as ,,biologist #ab ,,iii4 ,,mr4 ,,wells',s ,,ignorance ,,of ,,the ,,catholic ,,church #bb ,,iv4 ,,my ,,errors #bh ,v4 ,,mr4 ,,wells ,,shirks #cf ,,vi4 ,,the ,,great ,,rosy ,,dawn #dj ,,introduction ,mr4 ,h4 ,g4 ,wells brought out some time ago an ,outline of ,history1 the object of which was to deny the ,christian religion4 ,i examined this production for the benefit of my co-religionists in the columns of certain ,catholic papers4 ,i did full justice to ,mr4 ,wells's talents as a writer1 but ,i exposed his ill acquaintance with modern work on ,biology1 with early ,christian writing and tradition1 with ,christian doctrine itself3 and1 in general1 his incompetence4 ,stung by this exposure1 ,mr4 ,wells has just brought out against me a small pamphlet1 under the title of ,mr4 ,belloc ,objects to the 8,outline of ,history40 ,it is an excited1 popular1 crude attack1 full of personal insult and brawling1 and ample proof that he is hit4 ,but it is singularly weak in argument1 confused in reply1 and1 as ,i shall show in a moment1 shirks nine-tenths of the very damaging criticism which ,i directed against his book4 ,that book denies a creative ,god4 ,there is no ,god1 the ,father ,almighty1 ,creator of ,heaven and ,earth4 ,the ,incarnation is a myth2 the ,resurrection a falsehood2 the ,eucharist a mummery4 ,probably ,mr4 ,wells is thus infuriated1 not only at being exposed1 but also because he cannot understand how such an assault upon religious truth should possibly provoke resentment2 yet ,i think ,i can explain the thing to him by a parable4 ,supposing 7it is mere hypothesis7 that a man were to attack the ,royal ,family1 and ,his ,majesty in particular1 jeering at the functions which monarchy performs for the ,state and holding up the ,king of ,england to contempt4 ,mr4 ,wells would be the first to admit that a man so misbehaving himself would receive very hard knocks indeed4 ,he would be called severely to account on all sides4 ,it would be said that his spite arose from some personal grievance against the ,great2 that he thus relieved his soreness at feeling himself socially neglected1 and so on4 ,he might justify himself as a martyr in the cause of political duty1 but he would be a fool if he did not look out for squalls4 ,now the great and fundamental truths of the ,christian religion are still sacred to quite a number of ,mr4 ,wells's fellow-citizens1 including myself4 ,our attachment to them is at least as strong as the loyalty of the average ,englishman to the ,royal ,family2 and if he attacks them by way of ,history--making out that ,history disproves the ,christian religion--then it is not1 as he seems to imagine1 an outrage2 but1 on the contrary1 a natural and inevitable consequence that he should be taken to task1 and his competence for writing history severely examined4 ,i propose to reply in this pamphlet1 not because ,i have any intention of being drawn into a slanging match with a writer who is my superior in this form of art1 but because no challenge to ,truth must be allowed to pass unheeded4 ,so far from imitating ,mr4 ,wells1 ,i shall take care when ,i publish--as ,i do in a few weeks--my whole book1 entitled ,a ,companion to ,mr4 ,wells's 8,outline of ,history10 to go carefully over my text and to cut out anything which could be construed into mere personal attack2 though ,i shall preserve1 of course1 and even add to1 the due and often severe criticism which ,mr4 ,wells deserves for pretending to teach others on the basis of his own most insufficient instruction4 ,i should1 no doubt1 greatly increase the circulation of this little pamphlet of mine were ,i to season it with those offensive references to personal habits and appearance which are now fashionable between contemporaries4 ,but ,i do not aim at any large circulation1 beyond that reasonable amount which will secure my being heard by the people whose attention is worth having4 ,invective such as ,mr4 ,wells substitutes for argument is wholly irrelevant4 ,when you are discussing the competence of a man to write history1 it is utterly meaningless to throw about the jeers of the gutter on his dress1 accent or any other private detail concerning him4 ,if you discover a man pretending to write about ,roman antiquity and yet wholly blind to the effect of ,latin literature1 you rightly point out his ignorance4 ,but it is not to the purpose to accuse him of having a round face or a thin voice4 ,indeed1 were invective my object 7which it most certainly is not71 ,i should rather have answered in verse as being the more incisive and enduring form4 ,if it be a test of literary victory over an opponent to make him foam at the mouth1 then ,i have won hands down2 but ,i do not regard ,mr4 ,wells as my opponent1 nor am ,i seeking any victory4 ,i am simply taking a book which proposes to destroy the ,faith of ,christian men by the recital of pretended history1 and showing that the history is bad4 ,while praising many qualities in the book1 ,i point out with chapter and verse that the history is uninformed4 ,that is my point and my only point4 ,now that ,i have made it1 ,i hope1 quite clear that ,i am neither interested in ,mr4 ,wells's personalities nor intend to go one better upon them1 but to deal strictly with things capable of argument and intelligent examination1 let us cut the cackle and come to the horses4 99 99 99 99 99 ,mr4 ,wells's pamphlet against me1 to which ,i am here replying1 is a web of six elements4 ,these are not put in any regular order1 and the author himself would probably not be capable of analysing them2 but a competent critic has no difficulty in separating them one from the other4 ,they are3-- ,first3 ,a number of shrill grievances on general grounds4 ,for instance1 that though ,i have praised him highly ,i have not praised him highly enough2 that where ,i had to blame him ,i have used adjectives upon his work such as 8confused10 8ignorant10 which were not warranted2 that in general he is an ill-used fellow1 and is moved to complain most bitterly4 ,secondly3 ,he violently 7and this is the main gist of all his pamphlet7 assaults me for pointing out that his statement of ,darwinian ,natural ,selection as the chief agent of evolution is antiquated stuff1 exploded1 and proves him quite unacquainted with modern work4 ,here he jeers at me as putting on a pose of special learning1 and challenges me to quote any modern authorities substantiating my criticism4 ,he calls my argument fantastic1 a thing made up out of my own head1 without any authority from competent biologists4 ,he denies the existence of any such group of modern men of science opposed to ,darwinian ,natural ,selection4 ,it is an amazing thing that his ignorance should reach such a level as that1 but it does4 ,and it is there ,i am going to hammer him4 ,thirdly3 ,there runs all through the little pamphlet1 and still more through the book itself1 a startling ignorance upon the ,catholic ,church1 and in particular the idea that the ,church is opposed to scientific work1 even such elementary science as ,mr4 ,wells attempts to expound4 ,fourthly3 ,he complains that ,i have in certain specific points misread his meaning1 misstated his conclusions or affirmations1 and made errors myself in attempting to correct his4 ,he brings1 it is true1 no more than three specific allegations2 three out of a total of ,i know not how many score1 in a body of work which catches him up and exposes him over and over again4 ,nevertheless1 such as they are1 being specific allegations1 however few1 they must in justice be met2 and ,i will here meet them4 ,fifthly3 7and most significant73 ,there is the embarrassed silence of ,mr4 ,wells's pamphlet3 his inability to meet nine-tenths of the points ,i have brought against him1 and his discreet shirking all mention of them4 ,sixthly3 ,the book ends with ,mr4 ,wells's usual glorious vision of a glorious ,millennium contrasted with the sad blindness of ,catholics in general1 and myself in particular1 to this approaching ,seventh ,monarchy4 ,i will deal with these six matters which build up ,mr4 ,wells's pamphlet1 taking them in the order ,i have given4 ,i ,,mr4 ,,wells',s ,,general ,,grievances ,i cannot pretend in so short a pamphlet as this to deal with all the separate lamentations with which ,mr4 ,wells has filled the air4 ,but ,i can state the principal of them1 and try to make him understand how wrong-headed he is in his objections4 ,of these general points1 the first and1 perhaps1 most important is that he was refused a right of reply4 ,on page v of his pamphlet he distinctly insinuates that ,i was afraid of hearing his reply1 and had it suppressed4 ,for he says that the ,editor of the paper in which my articles appeared would not give him his opportunity1 and that he so refused 8after various consultations with ,mr4 ,belloc40 ,as to the space which was offered1 and the exceptional facilities which1 ,i understand1 were granted to this angry man1 the ,editor must1 of course1 speak for himself1 and has1 ,i believe1 done so4 ,but as to the part which ,i took1 it can be stated very simply4 ,i was told by the ,editor 7who had asked to see me on the matter7 that ,mr4 ,wells desired to reply in the same columns in which he had been criticised4 ,i was asked what my attitude was in the matter1 and ,i affirmed in the strongest fashion 7to which the ,editor will bear witness7 my belief that the fullest right of reply should always be given to anyone criticised on matters of fact or judgment4 ,the interview did not last ten minutes1 but1 to give a record of my attitude1 ,i wrote a strong and clear letter to the same effect4 ,so far as ,i am concerned ,i asked for nothing better than a reply1 and ,i believe the ,editor offered it4 ,of two things1 one1 either ,mr4 ,wells knew my attitude1 in which case his insinuation is inexcusable1 or he did not1 in which case it was only rash2 but at any rate he is1 in this first grievance of his1 quite wrong4 ,i particularly wanted him to have every opportunity for reply4 ,nothing could suit me better4 ,next he complains that ,i have not given him sufficient praise1 or1 at any rate1 not praised him as continuously1 highly and enthusiastically as ,i ought to have done4 ,he complains that ,i only give him 8slow0 and 8formal compliments0 7page #b7 and 8patronising praise0 7page #e74 ,he is wounded because ,i accuse him of violent antagonism to the ,catholic ,church 7page #a7 7an accusation which he denies very earnestly74 ,he indignantly repudiates any bias against the gentry in history--which social class ,i ask him to revere4 ,lastly1 he accuses me of using such terms about many passages in the ,history as 8ignorant10 8childish10 8confused40 ,i am afraid it is necessary before touching on these grievances to explain to ,mr4 ,wells what criticism is1 for it is clear that he has never considered the nature of that literary function4 ,when you criticise the writing of a man who deals with definite facts and the conclusions to be drawn from them1 it is your business to praise what is praiseworthy in his effort1 and to condemn what is insufficient1 false or bad4 ,you do not praise 7if you are a serious critic7 simply as a sort of sop or counterbalance to blame2 you praise because you find things worthy of praise--and you blame where you find things worthy of blame4 ,there was nothing oily or patronising1 nor even adventitious and artificial in the praise which ,i saw fit to offer4 ,it was not vague1 it was very definite1 and1 ,i think1 just4 ,moreover1 it was very strong praise1 of which any writer might be proud at the hands of a colleague4 ,i praised ,mr4 ,wells's lucidity and economy of manner1 his sense of proportion1 and1 above all1 his most remarkable talent for presenting a vivid picture to the reader4 ,in this my words were1 8,none of our contemporaries possesses it0 7the gift of lucid and vivid description7 8in anything like the same degree40 ,in other words1 ,i said that he possessed a talent of the most important literary kind1 which any writer would envy1 and that he possessed it in a degree which made him superior to any contemporary4 ,i also said that he was conspicuously sincere1 that he wrote very clearly1 with an 8excellent economy in the use of words10 and was unreserved in my hearty appreciation of his accuracy in details of reference1 such as dates1 spelling of names1 etc4 ,i went on to say how strongly he felt the importance of history to mankind1 though it is true that ,i qualified this by saying that by mankind he meant the only sort of mankind he knew4 ,i said of his honesty of purpose1 8that it was a quality apparent in every line of the work40 ,really1 if that sort of thing is 8oiliness10 ,mr4 ,wells must be very difficult to please6 ,it may be 8slow02 it is not a torrent of undiscriminating adulation2 it is mixed with justified blame4 ,but it is such a catalogue of remarkable literary powers as ,i would not make for another writer4 ,i did much more than this4 ,i specifically praised whole portions of the book as being quite excellent1 notably his handling of the story of language1 and the prcis on many sections of history4 ,i have no space here to give a list of the passages in which ,i compliment him2 but they are numerous1 as any one of my readers will see when my book 7,a ,companion to ,mr4 ,wells's 8,outline07 shall appear4 ,but he is not satisfied2 and ,i am afraid the truth must be that these recent large1 popular circulations of his have gone to his head1 and now make him think himself much more talented than he is4 ,next he has a grievance which ,i have no doubt is quite sincere in his own mind1 but which any impartial observer1 ,i think1 would smile at4 ,i have said that he acts with violent antagonism to the ,catholic ,church1 and ,i have called that his motive4 ,that it is his motive ,mr4 ,wells 8earnestly denies40 ,well1 the whole book is written quite clearly round the object of convincing the reader1 by so-called evidence1 rather than reasoned argument1 that there is no design in nature1 and therefore no all-powerful creative ,god as the ,author of nature2 therefore1 again1 no revelation of such a ,god to men1 therefore1 naturally1 no question of the ,incarnation in ,jesus ,christ4 ,the ,atonement is man-made nonsense3 ,the ,fall of ,man never happened1 the ,resurrection is a foolish story1 and the ,eucharist a make-believe4 ,now what ,body is it which maintains in their entirety the doctrines thus attacked8 ,can anyone deny that it is the ,catholic ,church8 ,many of them have been held by other ,bodies schismatical or heretical to it1 and therefore the doctrines are often alluded to as those not of the ,catholic ,church1 but of a vague entity1 impossible to define1 called 8,christianity40 ,nevertheless1 we all know that the denial to-day of those doctrines does not provoke determined resistance in any large organised ,body outside the ,catholic ,church4 ,apart from this1 there are expressions of contempt which quite clearly show the rabidness of the author's reaction against the ,creed4 ,there is no doubt at all that the ,church makes him 8see red0--as she does so many others4 ,he says he is not conscious of any such motive in attacking all the prime dogmas of the ,christian ,faith4 ,well1 ,i will give him a parallel4 ,suppose a foreigner were to write an ,outline of ,nineteenth ,century ,history1 and to say in it that ,islanders were always rascals1 that the love of sport and games was degrading--and particularly vicious that of football and cricket--that the ,english language was an offensive vehicle of thought and had produced nothing worthy2 that sea-power was a myth1 and that ,nelson in particular was a bungler at handling ships2 that the administration of ,india was a failure and a crime2 and that the creation of large ,overseas ,colonies from the ,mother ,country was a fatuous experiment4 ,should we not say that the gentleman had some bias against ,england8 ,were he to tell us that he was not conscious of such a motive1 we should answer1 8,very well1 then1 you aren't--since you say so4 ,but the motive is certainly there1 and your case is the most extraordinary case of the subconscious ever presented to a bewildered onlooker40 ,next1 ,mr4 ,wells objects most emphatically that ,i have done him the grievous wrong of calling him a patriot4 ,i am quite willing to withdraw the words1 to admit my blunder1 and to apologise to ,mr4 ,wells for having made it4 ,every man is the judge of his own thoughts1 and if he assures me that he hates his country1 or is even indifferent to its fate1 ,i will readily accept the statement4 ,i will substitute in my book for the word 8patriot0 the word 8national10 my only point being that ,mr4 ,wells is highly local in his outlook4 ,i was careful to say that the patriotic 7or national7 motive was1 in my opinion1 an advantage to the historian2 but that its great danger was limitation1 and that in the particular case of ,mr4 ,wells the limitation was so narrow as to be disastrous to a general view of ,europe3 making him unable to understand anything that was not of his own particular suburban world4 ,he is wounded because ,i pointed out his odd reaction against the idea of a gentleman1 and his dislike of the gentry1 and says that ,i bid him 8revere0 them4 ,i never asked him to do anything so silly as to revere the gentry4 ,i am sure ,i do not revere them myself4 ,what ,i did say was that it weakened an historian and pretty well put him out of court when he wrote1 not with balanced judgment1 but negatively1 out of hatred2 and that piece of criticism ,i must maintain4 ,as for his attitude towards the type called 8a gentleman0 in history1 and in contemporary life1 it would be easy to give examples out of other books from the same pen4 ,but ,i am rigidly confining myself to this book--the ,outline of ,history--and ,i submit that right through this work you see this strong dislike appearing4 ,it appears in his treatment of the type1 ,roman1 ,french or ,english1 ancient1 medival or modern4 ,to take one instance out of a hundred1 his sneer at the late ,lord ,salisbury in the pamphlet against me is characteristic4 ,he suggests that this great man and considerable scientist was incompetent to discuss a simple question in biology1 and had to be coached for the purpose1 and badly coached4 ,all our generation is a witness to the great talent of ,lord ,salisbury and to the range of his learning1 and since he was no man's enemy1 and certainly never can have done any harm1 direct or indirect1 to ,mr4 ,wells1 ,i can only suggest that the word 8,lord0 was sufficient to throw ,mr4 ,wells off his balance4 ,now for the condemnatory words to which he objects1--presumably on account of their force--words which ,i have1 indeed1 used in connection with his work1 and shall certainly use again3 such words as 8ignorance10 8blunders10 8childish10 8unscientific10 etc4 ,i see ,i must again explain to ,mr4 ,wells an obvious principle in criticism which he fails to grasp4 ,a word is not out of place in criticism unless it is either irrelevant or false in statement or in degree4 ,the mere strength of a word does not put it out of court4 ,on the contrary1 if the strength of the word is exactly consonant to the degree of error noted the criticism is more just than if a milder word had been used4 ,to say that a man who poisons his mother in order to obtain her fortune is 8reprehensible0 is bad criticism4 ,to call him an 8inhuman criminal0 is sound criticism4 ,irrelevant condemnatory words are very properly objected to by their victims4 ,but relevant condemnatory words are not only admissible1 but just and even necessary4 ,i must not fill the whole of this little reply of mine with a mass of quotation illustrating the justice of the words ,i have used1 but ,i can give a few examples which are conclusive1 and which the reader has only to hear to be convinced4 ,as to 8ignorance40 ,this is a word exactly applicable to point after point in the ,outline which ,i have thoroughly exposed4 ,for instance1 it is ignorance not to appreciate the overwhelming effect of ,latin literature upon all our civilisation4 ,it is not mere omission which has left out this capital factor from ,mr4 ,wells's strange idea of ,rome2 it is1 and could only be1 an insufficient knowledge of what that factor was4 ,if a schoolboy1 writing an outline of the ,battle of ,waterloo1 leave out all mention of ,blcher1 that is not a mere omission1 it is ignorance4 ,there is an example of ignorance on a very wide general point4 ,next let me give an example of a highly particular point4 ,it is really startling in its effect4 ,mr4 ,wells nourishes the idea that the technical name for the ,incarnation is the ,immaculate ,conception6 ,it is perfectly legitimate to say that the man of average education is not bound to be familiar with technical terms in a special department1 such as that of religious terminology2 but when he sets out to discuss that particular department1 he must at least have the alphabet of it4 ,had he never mentioned the ,immaculate ,conception at all1 the accusation would not lie3 as he has foolishly blundered into mentioning it1 the accusation does lie4 ,a ,frenchman who has never been to ,england cannot be called ignorant because he is unfamiliar with the streets of ,london4 ,but what of a ,frenchman who writes a guide to ,london and mixes up ,victoria ,station with ,buckingham ,palace8 ,but by far the most striking example of ignorance in his work1 an example upon so astonishing a scale that one could hardly believe it even of popular 8scientific0 stuff1 is to be found in ,mr4 ,wells's complete ignorance of the modern destructive criticism of ,darwinian ,natural ,selection4 ,he not only 7as we shall see in a moment7 has never heard of this ,european1 ,english and ,american work--he actually denies its existence and imagines ,i have made it up6 ,again1 ,i have used the word 8childish0 of his attitude on more than one occasion4 ,is the word 8childish0 too strong8 ,i will give examples4 ,in his fury against me he suggests that ,i cannot 8count beyond zero10 and he admits1 with a sneer1 that ,i perhaps understand the meaning of the word 8strata40 ,he tries to make capital of my giving the name of the very eminent anthropologist1 ,e4 ,boule1 without putting 8,monsieur0 before it1 and says that ,i 8elevate ,monsieur ,boule to the eminence of #8,boule4'0 ,that is childish4 ,all the world cites eminent men by their unsupported name4 ,it is a sign of honour4 ,for instance1 that great authority1 ,sir ,arthur ,keith 7whom ,mr4 ,wells sets up to have read and followed71 says 8,boule40 ,didn't ,mr4 ,wells know that8 ,he says that he uses the term 8,roman0 ,catholic because it is the only one he knows with which to distinguish between the many kinds of ,catholics4 ,whereas 7and everybody knows it1 including ,mr4 ,wells in his more sober moments7 the term is only used either because it is the legal and traditional word of ,english ,protestantism1 or1 much more legitimately1 to distinguish between us of the world-wide ,roman ,communion and those sincere men 7many of whom ,i am proud to count my friends7 who emphasise ,catholic doctrine in the ,english ,church and call themselves 8,anglo-,catholics40 ,this wild protest1 that there are any number of other ,catholics--,scotto-,catholics1 ,americano-,catholics1 ,morisco-,catholics1 ,indo-,catholics1 ,mongolo-,catholics--is frankly ridiculous1 and ridiculous after a fashion which it is legitimate to call 8childish03 the mere explosion of a man in a passion4 ,yet another example4 ,finding me to have overlooked a tiny misprint 78ai0 for 8ia07 in the printing of a proper name1 he writes a whole page about it4 ,the proper adjective for absurdities of that kind is the adjective 8childish40 ,i could give any number of other examples1 but ,i think these are quite enough4 ,in point of fact1 ,i only use the word 8childish0 rarely--,i do not know how often in my whole book1 but at a guess ,i should say not more than three times4 ,but each time ,i am sure that it is well deserved4 ,however1 if he prefer a more dignified adjective1 such as 8immature0 or 8unstable0 or 8puerile10 or any other1 ,i am quite willing to meet him1 so long as he allows me to say that he only too often in his violence does write things which make him ridiculous from their lack of poise4 ,and what of the adjective 8confused0 or 7for ,i am afraid ,i allowed myself that licence7 8muddle-headed08 ,well1 ,i can give examples of that innumerable4 ,for instance1 he cannot conceive that ,i should call him unscientific1 seeing that he was one of ,huxley's students4 ,what on earth has that got to do with my accusation8 ,if a man should call me a very poor ,latin scholar 7which ,i am--but then ,i do not write popular manuals on ,latin poetry71 would it be any reply to tell him that ,i had been as a boy at a school of which ,cardinal ,newman was the head1 or as a young man that ,i had been at ,balliol2 or that among my intimate acquaintances whom ,i listen to fascinated upon classical themes were some of the greatest scholars of my time8 ,whether ,mr4 ,wells is a scientific man or not must be decided1 not by his having attended classes under ,huxley1 but by the use he has made of his reading2 and it is easy to prove that that use has been deplorable4 ,mr4 ,wells is unscientific because he does not survey the whole of evidence upon a point1 and weigh it1 and especially because he is perpetually putting forward hypothesis as fact--which may be called the very criterion of an unscientific temper2 because he introduces mere fiction as an illustration of supposed fact 7e4g4 the nonsense about human sacrifice at ,stonehenge7 and the material for a magazine shocker as though it were history4 ,it is quite unscientific to tell people that a point highly debated and not yet concluded ranks as ascertained scientific fact4 ,it is quite unscientific1 in talking of early ,christian doctrine1 to leave out tradition2 still more is it unscientific to work on it without any knowledge of the sub-,apostolic period4 ,it is unscientific in the highest degree to leave out an elementary mathematical argument as though it were mere juggling with figures1 and to play to the gallery by saying that your critic has got some wonderful system of figures or other which nobody can follow4 ,the words 8science0 and 8scientific0 do not imply a smattering of biology or geology2 still less do they imply mere popular materialism4 ,they imply real knowledge1 finally accepted after full enquiry upon complete evidence2 and that is why there is nothing less scientific in the world than this so-called popular 8science10 which is perpetually putting forward exploded guesses of the last century as ascertained facts4 ,as for muddle-headedness1 what can be more muddle-headed than mixing up the general theory of evolution with the particular 7and now moribund7 materialist theory of ,natural ,selection8 ,and yet that is what ,mr4 ,wells is perpetually doing6 ,it is true that a great many other people do it too1 but that is no excuse4 ,the whole of his argument on pages #ah1 #ai and #bj is precisely of that kind4 ,it would be incredible to me that any man could get confused between two such completely separate ideas had ,i not most wearisome and repeated experience of it--and here is ,mr4 ,wells repeating it again6 ,the general theory of transformism 7which itself is now subjected to a very heavy and increasing modern attack7 may be compared to saying that a man travelled from ,london to ,birmingham4 ,but the theory of ,natural ,selection may be compared to saying that he travelled by motor-car and not by railway4 ,now suppose a man on trial for his life for a murder which had taken place not on the railway1 but by the roadside between the two towns4 ,the whole issue turns upon whether the prisoner had travelled by motor-car or by railway4 ,what should we say of ,counsel for the ,defence who confused these two issues and thought that the prosecution was concerned merely with the man's going from one town to the other1 and not with the road he travelled8 ,i do not know whether the judge would stop him or no1 but ,i know that ,counsel for the ,crown would walk round him4 ,he would say1 8,the issue is not whether the man went from ,london to ,birmingham2 we grant that4 ,the point is whether he went by motor-car or by railway40 ,the only issue in the controversy1 which ,mr4 ,wells has both misunderstood and rashly engaged in1 is upon the agency of ,evolution1 not upon ,evolution itself4 ,yet he has confused the two6 ,another example of bad muddle-headedness is his mixing up the ,catholic use of relics and the ,catholic use of sacred images with the unwarranted illustration of the unknown prehistoric past1 and the unwarranted basing of a detailed conclusion upon the insufficient evidence of a few bones4 ,i say in my criticism of ,mr4 ,wells1 and ,i say quite rightly1 that to put forward a picture of an imaginary being called 8,eoanthropus10 giving him a particular weapon and gait and gesture1 and an expression 7which1 as ,i have said1 made him very like one of my acquaintance71 was utterly unwarranted upon the exceedingly doubtful evidence of the fragments called 8,the ,piltdown skull40 ,sacred images in ,catholic use are not--and surely everybody ought to know that--attempts at reconstruction1 still less are they fakes to try and get people to believe that1 for instance1 an ,archangel has goose wings and curly hair4 ,they are symbols2 are powerful and useful aids to devotion1 not reconstructions4 ,nor are relics in any way parallel to fossil evidences4 ,we venerate a relic of ,st4 ,agnes 7such as ,i am glad to say ,i have in my house71 both because it is a striking memorial of that very holy witness to the ,faith1 who gave up her life for it1 and because 7what ,i will not debate here7 we believe that the sanctity of the person can upon occasion give virtue and power to such things4 ,but we do not say1 8,in case you do not believe ,st4 ,agnes ever existed1 here is a fragment of her bone40 ,to mix up two things so entirely different is muddle-headedness turned glorious4 ,i could add not only further examples justifying the terms ,i have used1 but a great many other terms equally justified4 ,i must leave it to the ampler space of my book1 ,the ,companion to his work1 which ,mr4 ,wells will have the pleasure of seeing before him in a very few weeks4 ,,ii ,,mr4 ,,wells ,,as ,,biologist ,i come now to what is the pith of ,mr4 ,wells's whole pamphlet4 ,it is evidently the matter upon which he is most pained2 it is also the matter on which he has most woefully exposed his lack of modern reading4 ,through page after page--thirteen whole pages--he slangs and bangs away at me--because ,i have exposed his ignorance of modern work upon ,darwinism4 ,there are in this furious attack two quite distinct points3 first1 his accusation that ,i pose as being a man having special learning1 with ,european reputation in such affairs 7very silly nonsense672 secondly1 his treatment of the arguments which ,i have put before my readers against the old and exploded theory of ,darwinian ,natural ,selection1 upon which theory1 remember1 all these popular materialists still desperately rely in their denial of a ,creative ,god and of ,design in the universe4 ,as to the first point3 there can be no question of my having put on airs of special knowledge in any of these affairs4 ,not only have ,i not pretended to any special knowledge on geology or pre-history1 or biology3 ,i have not even pretended to special knowledge on matters where ,i have a good deal of reading in modern and medival history4 ,when ,i took up the atheist challenge presented by ,mr4 ,wells's book1 ,i did so as a man of quite ordinary education1 because it was amply evident on a first summary reading of it that the writer was not a man of even average education4 ,i pretend to no more than that working acquaintance with contemporary thought which is common to thousands of my kind1 and ,i think it the more shame to ,mr4 ,wells that with no expert training ,i can make hay of his pretensions4 ,any man of average education1 reading and travel could have done the same4 ,suppose somebody were to write a little popular manual on chemistry with the object of showing that there is no ,god1 and were to say of the ,atom that it had existed from all eternity1 because it had no lesser parts1 but was eternally simple and indivisible4 ,the man of ordinary education would at once reply3 8,have you never heard of the ,electron80 ,he would be justified in putting it much more strongly1 and in saying1 8,is it conceivable that you are so hopelessly out of date that you have never heard of the ,electron and of the modern theory of the ,atom80 ,this does not mean that the person asking this most legitimate and astonished question would be posing as an expert in chemistry2 it would simply mean that in ordinary conversation with his fellows he was abreast of his time4 ,any of us whatsoever1 even if he read no more than newspaper articles1 would have a right to say1 8,my good fellow1 you are out of court with your absurd old-fashioned simple ,atom40 ,now suppose the person whom he had thus most justly criticised were to lose his temper and say1 8,you are making up all this about electrons out of your own head6 ,you do not quote a single modern authority by name in favour of this new-fangled theory of yours about electrons6 ,the reason you do not quote any name or authority is that you can't6 ,there are no such names60 ,would he not have delivered himself into the hands of his opponent8 ,that is precisely what ,mr4 ,wells has done4 ,he has shown himself utterly ignorant of all modern work in his own department1 and he must not cry out too loud at the consequences of his rashness4 ,why on earth ,mr4 ,wells challenged me to give names opposed to the old ,darwinian position ,i cannot conceive4 ,it was a tactical blunder1 so enormous that ,i can make nothing of it1 save on the supposition that he1 being a sincere man1 does honestly believe no modern destructive criticism of ,natural ,selection--let alone of ,transformism--to be in existence4 ,so much for my pose of great learning4 ,i pose to about as much learning in the matter as anyone among thousands of my own sort who by current reading keep abreast of the mere elements of modern thought4 ,now let us turn to the main point4 ,so there has been no destructive criticism of the old ,darwinian hypothesis8 ,so there are no names to be quoted against the particular distinctively ,darwinian invention of ,natural ,selection8 ,indeed6 ,let us see4 ,there is a certain ,professor ,bateson1 who has left on record the following judgment3-- 8,we0 7biologists in general7 8have come to the conviction that the principle of ,natural ,selection cannot have been the chief factor in determining species44440 ,and who is this ,professor ,bateson1 ,mr4 ,wells will ask 7perhaps with some contempt78 ,well1 he was the ,president of the ,british ,association when it met in ,melbourne in #aiad1 and the sentence ,i have just quoted dates from that year4 ,now let us turn to something totally different4 ,i give it1 not in ,german1 which ,i cannot read1 but in what ,i believe to be an adequate translation3-- 8,natural ,selection never explains at all the specifications of the animal and vegetable forms that are actually found44440 ,and who is the unknown fellow ,i have got hold of here8 ,driesch3 and his conclusion is much older than that which we have from ,professor ,bateson4 ,here1 again1 from the same insignificant little fellow1 we have this--thirty whole years ago3-- 8,for men of clear intellect ,darwinism has long been dead44440 8,oh60 ,i can hear ,mr4 ,wells saying1 8but who is this ,driesch80 ,well1 he stands among the greatest of the ,german biologists to all educated men4 ,but ,mr4 ,wells has never heard of him4 ,there is yet another ,german who put it more strongly still1 for he actually gave a title to his book which is1 being interpreted1 ,the ,death-bed of ,darwinism4 ,and who was he8 ,he was only a person called ,dennert4 ,here ,mr4 ,wells will1 ,i am sure1 protest and say1 8,oh1 this ,dennert you tell me about is surely extreme40 ,i am rather inclined to agree4 ,but that is not the point4 ,he wanted modern authorities1 and ,i am giving him a few4 ,mr4 ,wells had never heard of ,dennert4 ,let us turn to ,dwight3-- 8,we have now the remarkable spectacle that just when many scientific men are all agreed that there is no part 7my italics7 of the ,darwinian system that is of any great influence1 and that as a whole the theory is not only unproved1 but impossible1 the ignorant1 half-educated masses have acquired the idea that it is to be accepted as a fundamental fact44440 ,who is this fellow ,dwight8 cries ,mr4 ,wells4 ,whoever heard of him8 ,i do not know whether ,mr4 ,wells has ever heard of him1 but he wrote in the year #aiah4 ,and he happened to hold the position of ,professor of ,anatomy at ,harvard ,university4 ,at it again6 ,in the year #aiai there was published by a certain ,professor ,morgan 7who1 very rightly1 is a great admirer of ,darwin as the founder of popular modern interest in evolution73-- 8,selection does not 7my italics7 bring about transgressive variation in a general population40 ,indeed1 ,professor ,morgan's whole book1 and one might say his whole work1 is a moderate but sufficient destruction of the old orthodox ,darwinian stuff4 ,mr4 ,wells is now becoming restive4 8,who's this chap ,morgan8 ,i haven't heard of him4 ,he's a nobody80 ,well1 ,i am no student4 ,i am only a general reader--but ,i should imagine that ,professor ,morgan was somebody1 for he is the ,professor of ,experimental ,zoology in the ,university of ,columbia4 ,shall ,i go on among these authorities whom ,mr4 ,wells assures us don't exist8 ,we have ,le ,dantec1 with his whole crushing book of #aiji4 ,le ,dantec is only a ,frenchman1 it is true1 but1 after all1 he was at the time the newly-appointed ,professor of ,general ,biology at the ,university of ,paris giving his lectures at the ,sorbonne4 ,i might go right back to ,ngeli1 of whom certainly ,mr4 ,wells has heard1 for his work dates from some years before #ahic--the date when ,mr4 ,wells seems to have stopped making notes in class4 ,but perhaps ,mr4 ,wells would like the actual words of that authority--which again ,i quote 7from a translation1 because ,i cannot read ,german73-- 8,animals and plants would have developed much as they did even had no struggle for existence taken place44440 ,would ,mr4 ,wells like to hear ,korchinsky8 ,it will be news for him3-- 8,selection is in no way favourable to the origin of new forms40 ,and again1 from the same authority3-- 8,the struggle for existence1 and the selection that goes with it1 restricts the appearance of new forms1 and is in no way favourable to the production of these forms4 ,it is an inimical factor in evolution40 ,korchinsky may sound in ,mr4 ,wells's ears an outlandish name1 but ,i do assure him the authority is not to be denied4 ,or would he like ,cope1 as long ago as #ahid8 ,he at least1 ,i believe 7,i am only quoting from the books of others71 was pretty definite upon the impossibility of the rudimentary forms having survival values4 ,or1 shall we have ,delage--yet another ,continental name1 and a ,professor in these subjects8-- 8,on the question of knowing whether ,natural ,selection can engender new specific forms1 it seems clear to-day that it cannot40 ,that is straightforward2 that is not of yesterday2 that is as old as #aijc4 ,do let me fire one more shot at ,mr4 ,wells--it is such fun6 ,i take hotch-potch from a page printed a whole nineteen years ago1 this further set of names out of a much larger number there given3-- 8,von ,baer1 ,hartmann1 ,packard1 ,jeckel1 ,haberlandt1 ,goette1 von ,sachs1 ,kassowitz1 ,eimer40 ,i quote not my own list 7for ,i am quite incompetent here71 but the words of a first-class authority who draws up this list1 including many other names1 and ends3-- 8,perhaps these names mean little to the general reader0 7,mr4 ,wells being here the general reader74 8,let me translate them into the ,professors of ,zoology1 of ,botany1 of ,paleontology1 and of ,pathology1 in the ,universities of ,berlin1 ,paris1 ,vienna1 ,strasbourg1 ,tubingen1 ,amsterdam1 etc4 etc40 8,and who writes thus80 ,asks ,mr4 ,wells 7getting a little nervous7--why1 only one of the principal and most serious critics in ,biology of nineteen years ago1 and with a chair in ,stanford ,university4 ,i should have no difficulty in adding to the list4 ,i have quoted here more or less haphazard and hastily from my very general and superficial reading4 ,but surely when a man tells you that you have no authorities behind you1 and that you are making things up out of your own head1 even such a list as this must sound pretty startling to him4 ,mr4 ,wells had no idea of its existence4 ,if he had he would not have questioned it4 ,i have no quarrel with ignorance of this kind1 as such4 ,there is no particular reason why any general writer1 myself or ,mr4 ,wells1 or ,jones or ,brown or ,robinson1 should have even this amount of knowledge on a special department of modern science4 ,but then1 if he hasn't1 he shouldn't write about it2 still less should he say that the authorities alluded to don't exist--that their names cannot be quoted1 because there are none1 and that the arguments advanced by me were made up by an ignorant man who had no expert work from which to quote4 ,now that last sentence leads me to yet another thrust of the battering ram which ,i am bringing against poor ,mr4 ,wells4 ,he says that the arguments ,i have advanced against ,natural ,selection are of my own imagining4 ,so the arguments ,i have put forward 7only a few main arguments out of many7 were made up out of my own head1 and have no support from authority8 ,i have no acquaintance with the names or general conclusions of any experts in these affairs8 ,it would be1 indeed1 astonishing if ,i had acted thus1 seeing that nothing was easier than for me to write to any friend engaged in biological study and get the amplest information4 ,i did not do so1 because there was no necessity to do so4 ,that liberal education--which ,mr4 ,wells derides--was sufficient4 ,really1 ,mr4 ,wells here flatters me too much6 ,he does not know that the arguments were not mine but the main arguments which have been set forward by a host of competent authorities1 and which have proved so damaging that even the remaining defenders of ,darwinism have had to modify their position4 ,thus my first argument is the well-known one of accident being quite unable to explain the co-ordination of variations necessary to adaptation4 ,the point is this1 that not only one accidental advantageous variation which might give an animal a better chance of survival has to be considered1 but the general adaptation of all the organism to new conditions2 not only that1 but the marvellous adaptation of thousands upon thousands of special relations within complex organisms such as are the higher animals4 ,left to chance1 such co-ordination would be impossible4 ,the chance of a vast number of favourable variations all arriving together by accident approximates to zero4 ,it is a mere matter of arithmetic4 ,that argument in ,mr4 ,wells's judgment is 8burlesque10 8beautifully absurd10 and so forth4 ,but the judgment is not passed on him by me 7who make no pretence to anything but the most general reading on these affairs74 ,it is passed by such an authority1 for instance1 as ,wolff4 ,it is clear that ,mr4 ,wells has never heard of ,wolff2 yet it is1 ,i believe1 now nearly eighteen years since ,wolff brought out this argument1 and for all ,i know many another clear-headed man had preceded him2 certainly a great many have followed4 ,i do not pretend to have read ,wolff2 ,i have not4 ,but ,i have read the significant quotations from him1 and even if ,i had not done so ,i should1 as a man of general education1 have known at least what his position was4 ,shall ,i quote a single 7translated7 sentence8 7,mr4 ,wells with his wide command of languages may look it up in the original1 called1 ,i believe1 ,beitrage zur ,kritik der ,darwinischen ,lehre73-- 8,one could possibly imagine a gradual development of the adaptation between one muscle-cell and one nerve-ending1 through selection among an infinity of chance-made variations2 but that such shall take place coincidently in time and character in hundreds or thousands of cases in one organism is inconceivable40 ,my second argument is equally a commonplace with educated men1 and in saying that ,i am the author of it ,mr4 ,wells is again flattering me a great deal too much1 and again betraying his own astonishing lack of acquaintance with the subject he professes to teach4 ,i pointed out1 as hundreds have pointed out before me1 that ,darwinism obviously breaks down from the fact that it demands each step in evolution to be an advance in survival value over the last4 ,there again it is a plain matter of arithmetic that the chance of this happening accidentally is impossible4 ,mr4 ,wells is so confused in mind that he quotes as a bad example what ,i said about the reptile and the bird4 ,he seems to think that the argument is upset by the fact that there are intermediate forms and that in these intermediate forms the fore legs lose their function before they become wings4 ,if one could prove such a transformation--which one cannot1 it is mere hypothesis--it would have nothing to do with ,natural ,selection2 it would be simply an example of transformism4 ,what ,i say 7and what is obviously true in a myriad instances7 is that between the foot of the land animal and the flapper of the whale1 between the powerfully defensive and aggressive great ape and the weak1 more intelligent man1 there must be stages 7if the transition ever took place7 where the organism was at a positive disadvantage1 and that consideration blows ,darwinian ,natural ,selection to pieces4 ,when ,korchinsky calls selection through the struggle for existence a factor inimical to evolution1 he is saying exactly that2 and1 ,i repeat1 hosts of men great and small1 of high authority like these ,professors or of no authority like myself1 have been repeating that obvious bit of common sense for something like a lifetime1 though it would seem that for some extraordinary reason ,mr4 ,wells has never heard of it4 ,he makes the same sort of mistake about my third argument1 which was that rare variations would1 under the action of pure chance1 necessarily be soon reabsorbed in the mass1 and disappear4 ,he thinks ,i invented this argument in #aibf4 ,great ,heavens6 ,it is perhaps the most widely known of all ,ngeli's famous seven objections to ,natural ,selection which were formulated before ,mr4 ,wells left off reading on these subjects4 ,he ought to have been acquainted with them even in the elementary class work of his youth1 however little he might later read of more modern work4 ,has ,mr4 ,wells never heard that this was the very argument which compelled the first serious modification of the ,darwinian theory1 and began its breakdown8 ,i suppose not--,any more than he has heard that what he foolishly calls 8my0 first argument seriously shook ,weissmann's position--that most formidable of the ,darwinian remnant--and that as long ago as #ahif ,weissmann did1 if ,i am not mistaken1 in the preface to his book virtually admit that it could not be got over4 ,and so on4 ,i could write a whole book upon that rather dreary and negative subject1 the abysmal lack of acquaintance ,mr4 ,wells shows with the thought of his time4 ,i could expose him here in the matter of ,couenot1 or of ,vialleton's book1 as ,i exposed him in the ,manchester ,guardian1 or print in detail quotations from ,carazzi1 which ,i leave for another occasion4 ,but ,i think ,i have said enough to expose ,mr4 ,wells's pretence of reading in modern biology4 ,the bubble is pricked and has burst4 ,,iii ,,mr4 ,,wells',s ,,ignorance ,,of ,,the ,,catholic ,,church ,the ,third mark of ,mr4 ,wells's outburst against me ,i have called his amazing ignorance upon the ,catholic ,church4 ,that ignorance is1 of course1 still more apparent in his book4 ,but ,i am concerned here only with the way in which it appears in his pamphlet4 ,he inherits the old prejudice--flourishing strongly in the best ,no-,popery days--that for some unexplained reason a ,catholic is opposed to that most interesting intellectual activity1 the pursuit of physical knowledge4 ,he envisages the ,catholic ,church as teaching an inchoate heap of unconnected doctrines1 each of them highly concrete1 each of them flagrantly impossible1 and the chief of them an historical statement that in a particular place and at a particular time1 to wit1 in the neighbourhood of ,baghdad #eicj years ago1 there took place the ,fall of ,man4 ,he has no conception that we object to a book like his and to methods such as he uses because we use the human reason1 and are all brought up to know that the human reason is absolute in its own sphere4 ,exactly the same habit of clear thinking which makes us know the limitations of reason and makes us accept a mystery1 gives us our admiration for that divine gift of reason in man and our contempt for people who1 like ,mr4 ,wells1 have never been trained to use it1 and flounder the moment they try to think hard4 ,for instance1 nowhere is ,mr4 ,wells's intellectual weakness more apparent than in his inability to understand what is meant by a fixed type1 or general form4 ,he meets it with the dear old fallacy which has been known for more than two thousand years under the name of ,sorites--,i may inform ,mr4 ,wells that this is not the name of a disease of the body but of the intelligence4 ,it consists in always asking1 8where do you draw the line80 and on that pretence trying to avoid definition4 ,a fixed type does not mean that there is no difference between one individual or another1 nor exact identity of form between one time and another4 ,it means that there is a general idea which can be recognised and on which one can predicate3 as1 that cats mew and dogs bark1 that ducks swim and hens don't4 ,mr4 ,wells has innumerable readers1 and among them let me suppose a reader who has stolen a horse4 ,he is asked in ,court what he has to say in his own defence4 ,taught by ,mr4 ,wells1 ,i suppose he would say3 8,m'lud1 my defence is that there is no such thing as a horse4 ,you cannot draw the line between ,eohippus1 ,hippus ,alogos vel ,hodiernus1 and that glorious thing with wings and a halo which the horse will no doubt become here on earth if we give it time40 ,i am afraid he would not be allowed to get on very far with his defence4 ,the judge and jury would still ignorantly go on believing that there was such a thing as a horse1 an animal which behaved in a certain way and is very easy to recognise1 and the humble pupil of ,mr4 ,wells would go to gaol4 ,so also there is such a thing as man1 though ,mr4 ,wells seems to doubt it4 ,man has a particular nature1 and that nature is subject to questions which it is of enormous importance to him to decide4 ,his individuality1 his soul1 is1 for instance1 either immortal or mortal4 ,it is of first-rate importance to decide on that--infinitely more important than it is to decide on exactly how and by what stages his body came to be2 just as it is infinitely more important for a man to decide between right and wrong action in manhood than to make a selection of his photographs as a baby4 ,we ,catholics are interested in this ,animal ,man1 because we think 7making clear use of our reason7 that it is more important for man to know what happens to man and what man really is than for man to know any other subject4 ,we believe that he has been created by an omnipotent ,god1 to whom he is responsible for good or evil action committed by his own free will--for in man's free will we also believe2 we believe his soul to be immortal1 and to be tested for eternal beatitude or eternal loss thereof4 ,anyone is free to say 8,these doctrines are particular1 you admit yourself that you hold them on ,faith and not on positive evidence4 ,i for my part do not accept them40 ,there is no lack of reason in making that negative statement4 ,but a mind that can imagine that there is no such thing as man and indeed no such thing as a thing2 a mind 7to put it in the old language7 which is nominalist in that degree1 is in great peril of ceasing to be a mind at all4 ,the particular point on which ,mr4 ,wells comes his worst cropper in connection with the ,catholic ,church is a blunder to which he devotes a whole chapter of his pamphlet1 and over ten pages of print furiously reviling me4 ,he has got hold of the idea that the discovery of ,neanderthal skulls and skeletons destroys ,catholic theology4 ,he imagines that we wake up in the middle of the night in an agony of imperilled faith because a long time ago there was a being which was as human as we are apparently in his brain capacity1 in his power to make instruments1 to light fires1 and in his reverent burial of the dead1 but who probably1 perhaps certainly1 bent a little at the knee1 carried his head forward1 was sloping in the chin4 ,he thinks that unless a private individual like myself1 with hardly any more reading on anthropology than ,mr4 ,wells himself1 can give a definite theological definition on whether the owners of these skeletons were true men or not1 all the theological statements about man as we know him are worthless4 ,i can understand many a blunder about the ,catholic position on the part of people living in a world where they do not meet ,catholics and who know next to nothing of the past of ,europe or of the way in which our civilisation is a product of the ,catholic ,faith4 ,i often come across even well-educated men who have surprisingly little knowledge of the ,church2 but what ,i cannot understand is that a man thus ignorant should also be ignorant of the ordinary rules of thought4 ,a man's ,faith may possibly be shaken by some philosophical argument--though my own experience is that when it is shaken1 still more when it is lost1 the cause at work is not intellectual but always moral--the ,faith is lost through wrong doing4 ,but that the ,faith could conceivably be lost through not being able to define at what exact moment true man appeared1 is to me quite inconceivable4 ,i confess ,i cannot understand the mental processes of a writer who puts a test of that kind4 ,we are arguing as to whether ,wordsworth is a good poet or no4 ,one man says he is1 quoting from his best2 another man says he isn't1 quoting from his worst4 ,there barges in a third party who says cheerfully1 8,the whole discussion is futile4 ,there was no such person as ,wordsworth as a writer at all4 ,and to prove that1 here is a record of what he was like and what he did at the age of six1 and another when he was inarticulate upon his death-bed4 ,where do you draw the line80 ,we are discussing whether an individual is responsible for a particular action2 for instance1 writing a confused book4 ,one man says1 8,it was not his fault2 it was due to bad training40 ,the other says1 8,it was his fault1 for any rational being ought to write more clearly than that40 ,a third party barges in1 and says1 8,the whole discussion is futile1 for there was no such writer4 ,i can prove it by a photograph of him as a baby1 in which it is quite clear that he couldn't write books at all40 ,but ,mr4 ,wells's manifold lack of acquaintance with his most serious opponent is seen in plenty of other lights4 ,for instance1 there is his idea that scale destroys the ,faith4 8,only let me convince you10 he pathetically urges1 8that the material universe existed long before man1 and that the scheme of redemption only applies to the comparatively brief human period in geology4 ,only let me convince you1 and you will see how foolish all this ,christian talk is40 ,but we have all of us known all about that1 not only since first the ,church began1 but since first man began to trouble himself about divine things at all4 ,is not the sky at night sufficient evidence of scale8 ,is not the brevity of human life8 ,is not the magnitude of the world upon which we live--of even a part of which no man could have comprehensive knowledge in a thousand years8 ,there is ,i think in all of this an honest desire upon ,mr4 ,wells's part--,i may say a burning missionary zeal--to convert us to ,atheism1 something on the same level as that of those from whom he derives4 ,they were convinced1 you will remember1 not so long ago1 that to turn the inhabitants of ,wugga-,mugga into honest folk like themselves attending chapel1 meeting at tea-fights1 and even keeping one or two servants1 all that was wanted was a translation of the ,old ,testament in ,wugga-,mugganese--which translation they then did order in prodigious quantities and export to ,wugga-,mugga by the ton1 to the huge profit of a great number of salaried officials in the ,w4,m4 ,bible ,society1 and to honest rum-drinking sea captains as well2 but to no appreciable effect upon ,wugga-,muggaland1 its monarch1 aristocracy and common folk4 ,so ,i fear it will be with this effort at conversion of the ,catholic to ,atheism by an exceedingly insufficient rehash of text-books thirty years old4 ,mr4 ,wells sometimes pleads that all this doesn't matter1 because the ,catholic ,church no longer counts4 ,well1 that plea itself is a very good example of ignorance4 ,if he had a general acquaintance with ,europe he would know1 not only that the ,catholic ,church counts1 but that it is beginning to count more and more4 ,that is no proof of its right to the claim it advances of a divine authority2 but it is proof that there is a great social phenomenon present to the eye of every educated and travelled man to-day--the resurrection of the ,catholic ,nations1 the new attitude of the academic youth on the ,continent1 and particularly in ,paris2 the new wave in literature2 the breakdown of the nineteenth-century materialism in philosophy--which is not present in the experience of ,mr4 ,wells4 ,he tells us rather pathetically that he must know all about the ,catholic ,church1 because he now winters on the ,riviera4 ,i answer that the experience is insufficient4 ,if every rich ,englishman who wintered on the ,riviera acquired thereby a general grasp on the modern spirit of ,europe1 we should have among them a public to be envied2 but from what ,i have seen of those who thus escape the ,english winter1 the ,monte ,carlo ,express and the ,cosmopolitan hotels do not make for common culture1 let alone for an understanding of divine things4 ,i have no space to enlarge on the point4 ,mr4 ,wells knows as much about the ,catholic ,church as he does of the classical spirit1 of great verse1 of the architecture inherited from the ancients1 or indeed of any other noble tradition4 ,yet it should be a commonplace with anyone who attempts to write upon ,european history that some general knowledge of what the ,faith may be is a first essential in his affair4 ,that knowledge is rare and fragmentary in many considerable anti-,catholic historians2 in ,mr4 ,wells it is absent4 ,,iv ,,my ,,errors ,i owe it to ,mr4 ,wells that any error or misstatement ,i may have committed in the great bulk of work which ,i did showing up the paucity of his knowledge and the confusion of his mind1 should be corrected4 ,i now1 therefore1 deal with the specific1 particular points1 in which he says that ,i have misrepresented him or misunderstood him2 and these ,i will take in their order1 as they appear in his somewhat hysterical protest4 ,of these alleged misstatements ,mr4 ,wells manages to scrape up exactly six1 out of ,i know not how many in the detailed and destructive criticism which ,i directed against his work4 ,but even six alleged misstatements 7out of perhaps some hundreds of critical remarks7 should in justice be dealt with1 and ,i will deal with them here4 ,i will take his complaints in their order as they appear in his angry little pamphlet4 7#a7 ,i recommend him occasionally to a translation of foreign work1 though he is1 as a fact1 better equipped than ,i am in the reading of ,italian1 ,spanish1 ,german1 and ,portuguese2 while ,french comes to him much the same as his native tongue4 ,i accept his statement unreservedly1 and beg leave to tell him that in ,german1 ,italian1 ,spanish1 and even ,portuguese1 ,i am no use at all2 and that ,i am altogether his inferior in ,french4 ,for ,i have perpetually to consult better scholars than myself on the meaning of ,french words which ,i come across2 ,i write the language painfully1 and1 on the few occasions when ,i have to speak it in public1 ,i spend a vast amount of effort and am a burden to my friends before ,i can get my paper ready for delivery4 ,but it is only fair to myself to give him the reasons for my deplorable blunder4 ,i honestly took it for granted that he was ignorant of ,continental languages4 ,i had no idea of his quite remarkable linguistic achievements1 which are excelled only by two men out of my wide circle of acquaintance4 ,and the reason that ,i fell into this error was that his ,outline of ,history betrayed no acquaintance with general ,european culture4 ,my own acquaintance with that culture is no more than the general familiarity with it possessed by all men of average education1 and average experience in travel1 and average meeting with their fellows4 ,why ,mr4 ,wells should have concealed far greater advantages ,i do not know2 but1 at any rate1 he has certainly done so most successfully4 ,no one reading his ,outline of ,history could imagine for a moment that he had an urbane and comprehensive view of ,christendom based on the reading of ,french1 ,german1 ,italian1 ,spanish--and ,portuguese4 ,however1 ,i was wrong1 and ,i duly apologise4 7#b7 ,he accuses me of having put into his mouth the words 8climbing up the family tree10 as applied to the embryo2 which words1 as a fact1 he never used4 ,here1 again1 ,i am to blame--not1 indeed1 for having said that ,mr4 ,wells used words which he never used1 but for not having written with that clarity which the occasion demanded4 ,i had no intention of saying that ,mr4 ,wells had used this particular phrase himself4 ,i quoted it between inverted commas1 not because ,i ascribed it to himself1 but because it was a sort of current slang phrase familiar enough when ,mr4 ,wells and ,i were young and were both being taught the nonsense which he still so loyally defends4 ,the idea was that the embryo reproduced in various stages of its development the various stages of its ancestry in the evolutionary process4 ,the proper scientific term for this conception or theory is 8,recapitulation40 ,to this theory of ,recapitulation ,mr4 ,wells amply commits himself in his book4 ,he brings it out specifically in connection with man4 ,how his allusions to ,recapitulation look in the light of modern scientific work we shall see in a moment4 ,the particular point here is that he did not use the particular phrase 8climbing up the family tree40 ,he did not1 and ,i never intended to say that he did4 ,i readily apologise for any misconception that may have arisen on that head4 ,but ,i confess ,i cannot for the life of me see how the matter can be of the least importance6 ,supposing ,mr4 ,wells were to write a criticism of my book1 ,europe and the ,faith1 and were to say1 8,mr4 ,belloc is for ever referring the main institutions of ,europe to the ,roman ,empire10 and then were to add1 out of his wide acquaintance with ,french literature1 that fine expression from ,verlaine1 8,o ,rome6 ,o ,mre60 ,i don't think ,i should rush into print and protest that ,i had been abominably maligned4 ,i should say that ,i was not the author of the expression 7if anybody bothered to ask me71 but that it put my opinion more tersely than ,i could have put it myself4 ,however1 if ,mr4 ,wells cannot bear the misunderstanding1 he will be relieved to know that in my book ,i have got rid of it by the simple process of adding the words 8as it was called in ,mr4 ,wells's youth and mine0 before the offending phrase 7and a very good epigrammatic one it is7 8climbing up the family tree40 7#c7 ,mr4 ,wells complains that ,i accuse him of not having read ,vialleton1 and brings forward1 in triumphant proof of my own ignorance of that great scientist1 the fact that ,i passed an error in proof1 allowing 8,vailleton0 to stand for 8,vialleton40 ,here it is ,i that must defend myself4 ,i bought ,vialleton's great book 7which is a destructive criticism of ,darwinism of a #ag-;inch calibre7 the week in which it came out1 and have consulted it ever since4 ,if ,mr4 ,wells is reduced for ammunition to the picking out of one misprint in some hundred thousand words of matter1 he must be in a terrible way4 ,but on the attached point1 that ,i accuse him of never having read ,vialleton1 and that 7as ,mr4 ,wells himself roundly affirms7 ,vialleton does not knock ,recapitulation sideways1 ,i can only repeat that ,i have made no error at all2 but that1 on the contrary1 it is clear ,mr4 ,wells has never read the book1 and probably never heard of it until he saw the name quoted in my criticism4 ,had he really read ,vialleton he could not have had the face to pretend that this great authority did not oppose the old-fashioned views ,mr4 ,wells was putting forward4 ,mr4 ,wells is foolish enough--and ignorant enough--to say that this leading ,european authority1 one of the greatest living authorities on his subject1 8may have seen fit in one of his works0 7my italics7 to set right some 8,french student0 7why ,french87 who had imagined that the embryo reproduced in detail all its ancestral life4 ,i might as well say that ,darwin 8may0 in some one of his works have seen fit to set right some ,english student who imagined all animals to have been created out of mud in a week4 ,why6 the whole of that great book is nothing but one continuous bombardment of everything--let alone ,recapitulation--which ,mr4 ,wells was taught in his youth4 ,he will hear all about it in my book1 and ,i am sure that he will wish1 when he reads what modern science really says1 that he had never talked about things of which he knows so little4 7#d7 ,he complains that ,i have abused him for stating as dogma 7with large diagrams7 ,croll's astronomical theory of glaciation as propounded--thirty-three years ago6--by ,sir ,robert ,ball4 ,but ,i did right to expose anything so monstrous4 ,not that astronomical factors may not1 or rather must not1 have been at work2 but that the particular theory which he puts forward for his innocent readers as admitted scientific fact1 has been dead and done for since #ahid4 ,surely one has a right in #aibf to point out that the popular teacher laying down in that year as fact an hypothesis which was exploded over thirty years ago should be exposed4 7#e7 ,he says that ,i have attacked him for not accepting the theory that times of high glaciation were also times of high sea-level1 and vice versa4 ,he says that he has followed in this authorities later than the authorities of twenty years ago which ,i quoted4 ,he is perfectly right4 ,i owe him an apology for this1 and when my book comes out the passage shall be wholly modified in consonance with recent work4 ,i over-emphasised the certitude of ,boule and others2 ,i admit that the point is in doubt and ought not to be treated as certain4 ,mr4 ,wells was obviously wrong in treating it as certain upon his side1 for the whole debate still remains doubtful 7as1 for instance1 in the latest work of all1 ,professor ,coleman71 but that does not excuse me for having been too positive on my own side4 7#f7 ,the last accusation ,mr4 ,wells brings against me is that ,i misrepresent him in similar fashion upon two points1 the ,neanderthal quality of the ,tasmanians 7now extinct7 and the use of the bow by ,paleolithic ,man4 ,as both these accusations turn on the same point 7to wit1 whether ,i was justified in reading confused writing as ,i did71 they are essentially one accusation1 and ,i will treat them as such4 ,in the matter of the bow being used by late ,paleolithic ,man the position is this4 ,mr4 ,wells gives a long description of later ,paleolithic ,man 7pages #ea-ef74 ,in the course of this description he tells us 7on page #ed7 that later ,paleolithic ,man disappeared and that a new culture took his place1 possessing 7what ,paleolithic ,man had not7 domesticated animals1 a knowledge of husbandry1 bows and arrows1 and the rest of it4 ,this1 of course1 is the orthodox doctrine of the famous ,gap between ,paleolithic ,man and ,neolithic ,man on which our generation were all brought up4 ,it is true that there are now guesses at the discovery of a link between them2 still the gap is very marked4 ,he ends up with a summary of the whole affair on page #ee1 carried over to page #ef1 where the section ends4 ,now1 in the middle of this description of later ,paleolithic ,man 7who1 remember1 had no bows and arrows71 he has a set of paragraphs 7on page #ec7 describing the well-known fact that these men executed drawings on rock surfaces4 ,on the same page is given a specimen of these drawings1 and above it1 by way of title1 the caption1 8,mural ,painting by ,paleolithic ,man40 ,this mural painting is nothing else but bows and arrows6 ,it is a picture of four men hunting with large bows1 three of them actually shooting arrows1 and the unfortunate animals stuck full of arrows so that there may be no doubt4 ,yet in the course of this very same description he says that it is 8doubtful if they knew of the bow60 ,and that phrase comes on page #ee1 two whole pages after the description of ,mural drawings and pictures of bows and arrows4 ,the division about later ,paleolithic ,man--who1 he has told us1 was supplanted by ,neolithic ,man--comes to an end and a new division begins4 ,in this new division ,mr4 ,wells suddenly starts to describe a type of ,paleolithic ,man upon whom the guess has been made that he came at the very end of the process and had a more advanced culture1 including bows and arrows4 ,what is any man to make of such a confusion8 ,first1 ,paleolithic ,man as an artist1 illustrated by a picture of him shooting away like the devil4 ,then1 the casual remark that he was too degraded to shoot at all4 ,then the end of ,paleolithic ,man and his replacement by ,neolithic ,man4 ,then ,paleolithic ,man reappearing1 pages after1 with bows and arrows all complete8 ,it looks uncommonly as though ,mr4 ,wells had written his first section1 putting an end to ,paleolithic ,man and introducing ,neolithic ,man1 before he had been told of the supposed later ,paleolithic men who had bows and arrows3 that he put in these latest ,paleolithic men as an afterthought4 ,but that is only an inference from reading his confused order1 and if he tells me that what he had meant to say was that there were two kinds of late ,paleolithic men1 one of whom had bows and arrows and the others had not1 of course ,i accept what he says4 ,only1 he should have written it plainly1 and he should not have illustrated the part describing the men who had no bow and arrows with a large picture in which bows and arrows are the main thing4 ,the other case of the ,tasmanian is a similar example of confused writing4 ,let the reader judge4 ,we have on page #dc and what follows a description of ,neanderthal ,man4 ,it is1 as is usual with ,mr4 ,wells1 a mass of vague guess work1 on very little evidence1 put forward as certain facts4 ,we have also the judgment of the author that those who regard ,neanderthal ,man as no ancestor of ours1 but a side-line of development1 have his approval2 though he admits that the other view is held4 ,this on page #di4 ,then ,mr4 ,wells steps sideways again4 8,no doubt0 our own breed1 8which includes the ,tasmanians1 was a very similar and parallel creature40 ,there is1 of course1 no ground for that 8no doubt10 but that is by the way4 ,he next goes on to say that some imaginary ancestor of ours and of the ,tasmanians 7whom he generously admits to be men71 is not so far from us as to have allowed contemporary types to have eliminated1 not indeed ,neanderthal but the ,neanderthaloid types4 ,then1 on page #eb1 there is a smart return to the original position that ,neanderthal ,man was not an early type of our own breed1 and that true men did not intermix with him4 ,mr4 ,wells may protest against my calling all this sort of thing a rigmarole1 but ,i think that is the right word for it4 ,it is certainly not history1 and1 above all1 it is not clear4 ,the confused impression left upon the reader's mind by the confused writing is that ,neanderthal ,man was not true man1 and yet that true man must have passed through a ,neanderthal stage1 having been both ,neanderthal and not ,neanderthal3 as it were1 so to speak1 and somehow4 ,however1 a critic's misreading1 though caused by the confusion of the author's style and the lack of orderly arrangement in his mind1 is none the less a misreading1 and ,mr4 ,wells may rest assured that when my book appears it shall be corrected4 ,my perplexed guess at what ,mr4 ,wells really meant shall be replaced by his own statement of what he meant1 and ,i will1 in these two cases of the ,bow and the ,tasmanian1 emphasise the muddlement of his method while apologising for the error into which it led me as to his intention4 ,with this ,i conclude my review of ,mr4 ,wells's specific grievances of misstatement4 ,they are1 as ,i have pointed out1 only six in number4 ,out of a prolonged examination--covering nearly a hundred thousand words--he could find no others4 ,of these six1 only one 7the fifth1 that on the connection of sea level with glaciation7 is a definite error of over-emphasis upon my part4 ,the first1 my ignorance of his remarkable proficiency in modern language 7including ,portuguese71 is more than natural1 because he had made no use of such knowledge3 nevertheless1 ,i shall correct it in my book4 ,the second is wholly insignificant1 and turns merely upon ,mr4 ,wells's misunderstanding of my use of inverted commas in a particular case4 ,in the third1 about ,vialleton1 he is simply wrong1 and1 what is worse1 pretends acquaintance with a book of which he clearly knows nothing4 ,so is he wrong about the fourth4 ,mr4 ,wells's definite affirmation for popular consumption of a theory exploded more than thirty years ago was disgraceful4 ,on the sixth point1 misreading due to ,mr4 ,wells's own confused order1 ,i have promised him the small necessary redress1 which he will receive4 ,now1 let me ask my reader1 in conclusion1 is it not remarkable that a man setting out to inform a large audience that ,god1 and our ,lord's ,divinity1 and our own immortal destiny are all nonsense1 doing so by a pretended 8science0 and favouring me as an insufficient critic of his book1 can only find in some scores of my exposures of him six points1 half of which tell heavily against himself1 while two of the remainder are due to his own confusion and only one--my over-emphasis on glacial sea level--has any substance in it8 ,v ,,mr4 ,,wells ,,shirks ,the most violent positive part of ,mr4 ,wells's attack upon me is1 as ,i have said1 his challenge upon the matter of ,natural ,selection1 his jeer that my arguments are wholly my own1 ridiculous and unsupported2 and his amazing assertion1 which he makes1 quite navely and sincerely1 that there has been nobody in modern criticism opposing the ,darwinian theory4 ,i think ,i have sufficiently exposed ,mr4 ,wells in these particulars4 ,but quite as important as this huge positive error on his part is the negative factor in his pamphlet which ,i here emphasise for the reader4 ,in my articles1 which are about to appear in book form1 ,i took his ,outline of ,history section by section1 examined1 turned over1 analysed1 and exposed failure after failure in historical judgment and information4 ,one challenge after another--,i know not how many in all1 but certainly dozens on dozens--was put down by me clearly and1 ,i hope1 methodically throughout a series of articles originally twenty-eight in number1 and of such volume that they still will form when rearranged a book not less than #gj1jjj or #hj1jjj words4 ,of all this great mass of destructive criticism which leaves his ,outline limp and deflated1 ,mr4 ,wells knows nothing4 ,he leaves it unanswered1 and he leaves it unanswered because he cannot answer it4 ,all he can do is to fill a pamphlet with loud personal abuse4 ,i do not think it difficult to discover his motive or the calculation upon which he worked4 ,he said to himself3 8,i have a vast reading public which will buy pretty well anything ,i write1 and very few of whom have seen or will see ,belloc's work4 ,for to begin with he has no such huge popular sales as mine2 and on the top of that his work is only written for his co-religionists1 who are an insignificant body4 ,also it only appeared in a few of their ,catholic papers1 which nobody reads4 8,therefore1 if ,i write a pamphlet against ,belloc holding him up to ridicule in every possible fashion1 slanging him with the violence so dear to the populace1 making him out to be a grotesque fellow--and yet shirking nine-tenths of his criticism--,i am in no danger of exposure4 ,the pamphlet attacking ,belloc will be very widely read1 people will believe anything ,i say in it about his articles1 because they will not have read these articles and because1 in their simplicity1 they think me a great scientist40 ,this calculation is partially justified4 ,i suppose that for ten men who may read ,mr4 ,wells's pamphlet against me1 there will not perhaps be more than one who will read this1 my reply4 ,but ,i would like to point out to ,mr4 ,wells that success of this kind is short-lived4 ,no one can read what ,i have said in the second section of this pamphlet1 no one can read that list of authorities of whom ,mr4 ,wells has not even heard1 and whom he loudly proclaimed not even to exist1 without discovering that the author of the ,outline of ,history was incompetent for his task4 ,very few people1 ,i think1 faced with chapter and verse of that sort1 can refrain from passing on the good news4 ,if you take the history of opinion upon matters of positive fact1 you will generally discover that the discovery of the truth affects at first but a small circle1 and that a popular error may cover a whole society4 ,but it is the truth that wins in the long run1 because the truth is not soluble3 it is hard and resistant4 ,the number of people who continue to believe that there has been no modern destructive criticism of ,darwinism by the greatest of modern biologists1 anthropologists1 and scientific men1 bearing the highest names in our civilisation1 will necessarily be progressively lessened as time goes on4 ,the half educated of any period are always cocksure of things which the real science of that period has long ago abandoned2 but their situation is not a stable nor a permanent one4 ,sooner or later they learn4 ,so undoubtedly will it be with ,darwinian ,natural ,selection4 ,mr4 ,wells's incompetence in that one department of his history has been exposed4 ,i have exposed it4 ,but note that he was here on his own chosen ground4 ,he boasted special instruction in these affairs of physical science1 and particularly in biology2 he contrasted his education with my own1 which had been so deplorably limited to the ,humanities1 and in his attack upon me he was fighting wholly upon a position chosen by himself4 ,what then would it have been had he attempted to meet the rest of my criticism1 filling up as it does much the greater part of my book8 ,how will he meet my objection that the man who tries to talk about the ,roman ,empire1 and our civilisation which is its product1 without any mention or conception of ,latin literature and its effect1 is incompetent8 ,how would he deal with the simple and obvious but conclusive fact that physical discovery was not the cause of religious disruption1 as may be proved by the simple fact that it came after and not before that disruption8 ,how will he handle my pointing out that he knows nothing of the history of the early ,church and has no conception of what the ,christian traditions and sub-,apostolic writings were8 ,what will he make of my showing him to be ignorant of ,catholic philosophy and ,catholic definition1 and yet absurdly confident in his attack on what he supposes them to be8 ,anyone can see how he deals with my criticism of him in all these things4 ,he is silent4 ,he does not rebut it1 because he cannot rebut it4 ,if he could have done so even in the briefest and most elementary fashion1 there would have been at least a few sentences to that effect in his pamphlet4 ,there were none except one vague phrase on the contemporary doctrine of the ,incarnation4 ,in plain ,english ,mr4 ,wells shirks4 ,he shirks the great mass of my attack4 ,he submits in silence to the bombardment--because he has no power to reply4 ,yet surely these proved absurdities on recorded history1 and not his backwardness in biological science1 are the main thing he has to meet4 ,it is principally through recorded human history and not through guess work upon the unknown past1 that he should rely1 in order to upset the ,christian ,faith of his readers4 ,the history of our race becomes a definable and concrete thing only after the establishment of record1 and if he fail there manifestly--as he has failed--he fails altogether4 ,mr4 ,wells must1 ,i think1 have heard the famous dictum of the late ,master of ,balliol upon his ,outline--a judgment which has already been quoted by more than one critic1 and which ,i am afraid he will hear repeated pretty often before he has done with it4 ,that very learned historian remarked3 8,wells's ,outline was excellent until it came to ,man02 and upon the whole it is about the truest epigram that could have been written4 ,save perhaps this4 ,mr4 ,wells's ,outline is excellent until he begins to deal with living things--somewhere about page ten4 ,,vi ,,the ,,great ,,rosy ,,dawn ,the last factor in ,mr4 ,wells's pamphlet is one that we must always expect from your ,bible ,christian who has lost his ,god4 ,he becomes a materialist troubled with ,pantheism1 and very eager to get away from the ,puritan disease of his youth--yet a vision remains4 ,he comes forward as the 8,seventh ,monarchy man10 which is1 indeed1 the natural term of your ,bible ,christian--even after he has lost his ,god4 8,i see knowledge10 says ,mr4 ,wells at the end of his diatribe1 8increasing and human power increasing1 ,i see ever-increasing possibilities before life1 and ,i see no limit set to it at all4 ,existence impresses me as perpetual dawn4 ,our lives as ,i apprehend them1 swim in expectation40 ,we have had this before over and over again1 not only from the enthusiasts of the seventeenth century1 but from the enthusiasts of the early heresies4 ,there was a glorious time coming4 ,reality--that is the ,faith--is a delusion4 ,now that you know it to be a delusion you are naturally down in the mouth4 ,but cheer up1 ,i have a consolation for you4 ,all will yet be well2 nay1 much better4 ,all is going forward4 ,my donkey will soon grow wings4 ,i need not waste my reader's time on that sort of thing4 ,it is sheer stupid enthusiasm1 indulged in to fill the void left by the loss of reason3 by a man losing himself in a fog of cheap print and becoming fantastically unaware of things as they are4 ,when1 in that connection ,mr4 ,wells tells me that we of the ,faith are backward people1 who 8because it is necessary for their comfort believe in ,heaven and ,hell0 7a comfortable place ,hell67 ,i answer that he appreciates the ,faith as a man born blind might appreciate colour4 ,when he tells me that this ,catholic sort 7to which ,i belong7 are besotted to stand by accepted morals1 beget children honestly1 love one wife and live decently1 ,i answer him that he is becoming disgusting4 ,when he says that we believe in immortality 8because we should be sorry to grow old and die10 ,i answer that he is talking nonsense on such a scale that it is difficult to deal with it4 ,when he goes on to say that we think we live on a 8flat ,world0 it becomes worse still1 and one can't deal with it2 it is no longer nonsense1 it is raving4 ,when he tells us that the ,catholic has about him 8a curious defensive note10 ,i am afraid he must be thinking of the ,church ,congress4 ,there was certainly no 8curious defensive note0 in my demolition of his own ignorance1 vanity and lack of balance4 ,when he tells us that ,i1 as a ,christian1 8must be puzzled not a little by that vast parade of evolution through the immeasurable ages10 he clearly has not the least grasp of the very simple principle that eternity is outside time1 and that relative values are not to be obtained by mere measurement in days or inches4 ,when he says that 8my0 phantasy of a ,creator4444 ,really1 my dear ,mr4 ,wells1 ,i must here interrupt4 ,why 8my0 phantasy8 ,not that he uses the word 8phantasy10 but he implies that ,i invented ,god 7another enormous compliment to me74 ,does he not know that the human race as a whole1 or at any rate the leading part of it1 including his own immediate honourable ancestry1 pay some reverence to ,almighty ,god1 and humbly admits ,his creative power and ,sustained ,omnipotence8 ,but ,i must resume4 444 that my phantasy of a ,creator has worked within disproportionate margins both of space and time2 when he tells me if ,i reach beatitude ,i shall feel like a fish out of water2 when he speaks like this1 ,i recognise the unmistakable touch of the ,bible ,christian who has lost his ,god4 ,mr4 ,wells has never met anybody1 ,i suppose1 of sufficient breadth of culture to instruct him in these things4 ,he does not know that the truths of the ,faith cannot be visualised2 he does not know that the ,faith is a philosophy2 he does not know that our limitations are no disproof of an infinite ,creator4 ,he boasts that his education was a modern one1 and taught him things that were unknown a hundred years ago4 ,so was mine4 ,i also was taught that the ,earth was a globe1 that geological time was prolonged1 and the rest of it1 but ,i was also taught how to think1 and ,i was also taught a little--not very much--history4 ,for instance1 ,i was taught enough to know that the doctrine of immortality did not arise in the ,middle ,ages1 as ,mr4 ,wells thinks it did1 nor even the doctrine of eternal beatitude4 ,but ,i was taught enough to regard these great mysteries with reverence and not to talk about them as preposterous4 ,in other words1 ,i was taught not to measure the infinite things of ,god1 nor even the great things of ,christendom1 by the standards of the ,yellow ,press4 ,when ,mr4 ,wells concludes this passage by saying1 8,i strut to no such personal beatitude10 and then goes on to say1 8the life to which ,i belong uses me and will pass on beyond me1 and ,i am content10 he does two unintelligent things4 ,first of all1 he mixes up the real with the imaginary 7for whether he will attain beatitude or its opposite has nothing whatever to do with his opinions upon the subject71 and next he falls into the very common error of confused intellects--the personification of abstract ideas4 8,the life to which we belong uses us0 is a meaningless phrase4 ,god may use us or we may use ourselves1 or some other third ,will1 not ,god's or our own1 may use us3 but 8the life to which we belong0 does not use us4 ,talking like that is harmless when it is mere metaphor1 it is asinine when it sets up to be definition4 ,he accuses the ,christian of being anthropomorphic3 it is just the other way4 ,it is we who are perpetually compelled to drag back inferior minds to a confession of their own apparently ineradicable tendency to talk in terms of their own petty experience2 to imagine that the whole world has 8progressed0 because they have daily hot baths and bad cooking1 while in their childhood they had only occasional hot baths1 but better cooking2 that more people voting is 8progressive0 as compared with people not voting at all2 that a lot of rich people going from ,england to the ,riviera every year is 8progressive0 compared with staying at home in the hideous surroundings of poor old ,england4 ,this leads ,mr4 ,wells1 as it always does all his kind1 to prophecy4 ,we are all of us approaching what ,i may call ,the ,great ,rosy ,dawn3 a goldmine3 a terrestrial ,paradise4 ,this sort of exaltation is the inevitable first phase of ,bible-mania in decay4 ,but it is a very short phase4 ,it is the shoddy remnant of the ,christian hope1 and when it is gone there will return on us1 not the simple paganism of a sad world1 but sheer darkness3 and strange things in the dark4 ,a ,,companion ,,to ,,mr4 ,,wells',s 8,,outline ,,of ,,history0 ,,by ,,hilaire ,,belloc ,,contents ,,chapter ,i4 ,,introduction ,,ii4 ,,mr4 ,,wells ,,and ,,the ,,creation ,,of ,,the ,,world ,,iii4 ,,mr4 ,,wells ,,and ,,the ,,fall ,,of ,,man ,,iv4 ,,mr4 ,,wells ,,and ,,god ,v4 ,,whence ,,came ,,religion ,,to ,,man8 ,,vi4 ,,we ,,come ,,to ,,real ,,history ,,vii4 ,,mr4 ,,wells ,,on ,,priesthood ,,viii4 ,,buddhism ,,as ,a ,,stick ,,with ,,which ,,to ,,beat ,,the ,,christians ,,ix4 ,,mr4 ,,wells ,,and ,,the ,,incarnation ,x4 ,,the ,,origins ,,of ,,the ,,church ,,xi4 ,,islam ,,xii4 ,,the ,,christian ,,dark ,,ages ,,xiii4 ,,the ,,middle ,,ages ,,xiv4 ,,the ,,reformation ,,xv4 ,,the ,,fruit ,,of ,,disruption ,,xvi4 ,,mr4 ,,wells',s ,,strange ,,obsession ,,that ,,the ,,catholic ,,church ,,has ,,been ,,killed ,,stone ,,dead ,,by ,,mr4 ,,darwin ,,summary ,transcriber's ,notes ,punctuation1 hyphenation1 and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book2 otherwise they were not changed4 ,simple typographical errors were corrected2 unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious1 and otherwise left unbalanced4