I have neither time nor space here to deal with Mr. Gomme’s original view that Christianity is a “purely European” religion. One can best return him his “Nonsense!” and let the stuff go with that. I have already noted his utter unteachableness about the universality of the Roman Empire. His avoidance of instruction in the history of the Christian religion is, if possible, more complete. Let me come now to his conclusion. He declares, which is totally untrue, that it is “one of Mr. Wells’ curious theories” that “primitive men are in all ways inferior to their successors.” (I point out the exact contrary in relation to the artistic achievements of Palæolithic and Neolithic men.) And then, just to show how these things could be done, he floats away into this sublime specimen of classical-side prose:—
“But a saner view of history suggests that it is not a story of mankind climbing one single hill (even up different sides of it) with ourselves high up, and all earlier peoples in darkness below left struggling up the same paths. Rather have the peoples of the earth climbed up their several hills, some higher than others (difficult as it may be to say which), all different; but the hills of Greece and Rome are among the highest; while we, climbing up our own, already perhaps higher than they, have the good fortune of being able to look across to their summits to learn something of their achievement, and receive light from those radiant peaks.”
A line of stars concludes, and one feels that nothing else could fitly conclude the perfect loveliness of this passage. Let the reader read it aloud in a firm, clear voice to savour the delicate charm of its parentheses, and let him realise what a river of glowing exposition an Outline of History might have been in the hands of Mr. Gomme. Let the reader reflect, too, upon the hopeless despair so perfect, so entirely Greek a passage must arouse in the mind of a writer who never experienced the blessings of a smattering of Greek. Not without reason is Mr. Gomme a stylist, and a fastidious critic of style.
§ 3
Two Catholic Critics
It is a relief to turn from the vanity and peevishness of Mr. Gomme to two more serious antagonists. Mr. Belloc is something of a special pleader, and both he and Dr. Downey forgo few controversial advantages. Dr. Downey is not ashamed to write of my “showman’s gestures” and so forth, but they both have minds and tempers that are disciplined; they are intelligently interested in The Outline of History as a whole; a passionate objection to my existence does not appear among their motives. They realise I have a definite standpoint and they state an understandable difference.
Mr. Belloc’s criticisms appeared in the Dublin Review and the London Mercury, and I do not think he has reprinted them. We had a brief but animated dispute in the London Mercury and the Catholic Tablet arising out of his comments, and I will not renew the particular issues then discussed, except in so far as they arise again out of Dr. Downey’s pamphlet. I will direct myself rather to Dr. Downey than to Mr. Belloc.
Like Mr. Gomme, Dr. Downey[[2]] has gone to the first edition of the Outline, and, like Mr. Gomme, he has not checked his comments by any reference to the current version. He is thus able to score very effectively over phrases and passages that the owners of the book edition will look for in vain. The weak point in the story of David and Michal, as it was told in the part issues, for instance, has been corrected, and my misstatement of the Sabellian view of the Trinity has been put right. Let me admit that I did not know what Sabellianism was when I wrote The Outline of History. Arianism I knew, and Trinitarianism I knew, but not the views of the Sabellians. It was not an oversight, it was complete ignorance that caused that misstatement, and Dr. Downey is legitimately entitled to all the advantage this confession entails. The fact remains that the second edition of The Outline of History does not contain the four or five words that betrayed my ignorance of this refinement of doctrine, but gives instead a correct statement of this Sabellian view. I doubt if there was any general delusion that I was an expert in the theological disputes of the early Church even before Dr. Downey called attention to the matter. Unlike Mr. Gomme, who evidently found the list of errata at the end of the Newnes edition of the Outline very useful, Dr. Downey has not troubled to look at that list. He would have found this Sabellian error already set right there.
[2]. Some Errors of H. G. Wells. By Richard Downey, D.D. Burns, Oates & Washbourne. 1921.
A criticism like that of Dr. Downey necessarily goes from point to point, and it is impossible to follow him closely without developing these notes into a confused miscellany of discussions. I leave with some regret a very fundamental and interesting issue, the issue between Realism and Nominalism, which is so closely interwoven with, and related to, the issue between the methods of thought of such Catholics as Dr. Downey and Mr. Belloc on the one hand, and of those who have been through the disciplines of modern science on the other. This issue has been very constantly in my mind throughout my life; my first printed article (in the Fortnightly Review in 1898) dealt with it, and it is discussed very fully in my First and Last Things. It crops up again and again in my writings, because I am persuaded that very many of the intellectual tangles of our time are due to the differences in intellectual temperament and training that the dispute between Realist and Nominalist developed and emphasised, and can only be resolved after a thorough discussion of these fundamentals of thought. I have sought in the limited space of the Outline to call attention to the fact that this difference is at the root of the main divergencies in the intellectual and religious life of our world, and I have expressed an opinion, which Dr. Downey and a hastily injected footnote from Mr. Ernest Barker completely fail to modify, that the method of the Catholic Church was, and is, essentially Realist. Mr. Barker says that, although Realism was at first the Church philosophy, after Occam Nominalism became the philosophy of the Church; Dr. Downey says it didn’t, and that Occam’s followers were prohibited from teaching; Mr. Barker says that Luther denounced Nominalism (upon which I am moved to remark that I do not care very greatly what Luther did or did not denounce); and there are technical uses and common uses of the word “class” and “species” which give great scope for a brilliant controversialist. I will confess I quail before the dusty possibilities of this three-cornered wrangle. And since I want to come to terms with Catholic teachers if I can—because it is surely as much their task as mine to supplant the present mischievous narrow teaching of national egotism in schools throughout the world by some wider and more widening instruction—I will in future editions of the Outline drop any reference to the philosophy of the Church out of this discussion of the opposition of Realist and Nominalist.
But my attitude towards the human story will not become catholic by that or any similar concession. The Outline of History is not a catholic history; it is rather an ultra-protestant history—using protestant in a sense that would shock a good Ulsterman profoundly—in a sense, that is, that would make Professor Huxley a good protestant. Dr. Downey in his opening passage regrets that I have allowed my “preconceived philosophical and religious notions to enter so largely into what purports to be a record of fact.” But no one can write a history of mankind without expressing one’s own philosophical and religious ideas at every turn. You cannot stand on nothing and hold up a world. You may pretend and attempt to do so, but that will be a dishonesty. You cannot even arrange a chronological table without a bias to prefer one sort of fact to another. I am “tendential”; that is perfectly true. But I give my readers full warning that my views are views. And the bulk of Dr. Downey’s pamphlet (and Mr. Belloc’s criticisms) is not so much an exposure of “errors” in the narrower sense of the word, as a discussion of quite fundamental differences of interpretation between the story I tell and the story implicit in orthodox Catholic teaching.