Under the stimulus of this remonstrance, the editor of the Universe, after a month’s delay and various consultations with Mr. Belloc and the directors of his paper, offered Mr. Wells the “opportunity of correcting definite points of fact upon which he might have been misrepresented,” but declined to allow him to defend his views or examine Mr. Belloc’s logic and imputations in his columns. Mr. Wells was disinclined for a series of wrangles upon what might or might not be a “point of fact.” He then offered his articles to various non-Catholic papers, but, with one accord, they expressed their lack of interest in either Mr. Belloc himself or in his exposition of Catholic ideas about natural selection, the origin of man, and the general course of history. Yet it seems to Mr. Wells that, regarded as a mental sample, Mr. Belloc is not without significance, and that the examination of the contemporary Catholic attitude towards the fundamental facts of history is a matter of interest beyond Catholic circles. Accordingly he has decided to issue these articles in the form of a book, and he has urged the publishers to advertise them, as freely as may be permitted, in the Catholic press. He has retained the “cross-heads” customary in journalistic writing.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| I | Mr. Belloc’s Arts of Controversy | [13] |
| II | The Theory of Natural Selection Stated | [29] |
| III | Mr. Belloc as a Specimen Critic of Natural Selection | [44] |
| IV | Mr. Belloc’s Adventures Among the Sub-Men: Manifest Terror of the Neanderthaler | [64] |
| V | Fixity or Progress | [80] |
MR. BELLOC OBJECTS
TO “THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY”
I
MR. BELLOC’S ARTS OF CONTROVERSY
I am the least controversial of men. Public disputations have rarely attracted me. For years I have failed to respond to Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, who long ago invented a set of opinions for me and invited me to defend them with an enviable persistence and vigour. Occasionally I may have corrected some too gross public misstatement about me—too often I fear with the acerbity of the inexperienced. But now, in my sixtieth year, I find myself drawn rather powerfully into a disputation with Mr. Hilaire Belloc. I bring an unskilled pen to the task.
I am responsible for an Outline of History which has had a certain vogue. I will assume that it is known by name to the reader. It is a careful summary of man’s knowledge of past time. It has recently been reissued with considerable additions in an illustrated form, and Mr. Belloc has made a great attack upon it. He declares that I am violently antagonistic to the Catholic Church, an accusation I deny very earnestly, and he has produced a “Companion” to this Outline of mine, following up the periodical issue, part by part, in the Universe of London, in the Catholic Bulletin of St. Paul, Minnesota, in the Southern Cross of Cape Colony, and possibly elsewhere, in which my alleged errors are exposed and confuted.
In the enthusiasm of advertisement before the “Companion” began to appear, these newspapers announced a work that would put Mr. Belloc among the great classical Catholic apologists, but I should imagine that this was before the completed manuscript of Mr. Belloc’s work had come to hand, and I will not hold Catholics at large responsible for all Mr. Belloc says and does.
It is with this Companion to the Outline of History that I am to deal here. It raises a great number of very interesting questions, and there is no need to discuss the validity of the charge of Heresy that is levelled against me personally. I will merely note that I am conscious of no animus against Catholicism, and that in my Outline I accept the gospels as historical documents of primary value, defend Christianity against various aspersions of Gibbon’s, and insist very strongly upon the rôle of the Church in preserving learning in Europe, consolidating Christendom, and extending knowledge from a small privileged class to the whole community. I do not profess to be a Christian. I am as little disposed to take sides between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant. Mr. Belloc will protest against that “Roman,” but he must forgive it; I know no other way of distinguishing between his Church and Catholics not in communion with it, as I am between a pterodactyl and a bird.