But to fall into such an error as that is like taking vitriol for water.
CHAPTER IX
MR. WELLS AND THE INCARNATION
As I approach what is much the most important section of Mr. Wells’s book (for it deals with much the most important subject in all History—I mean the Incarnation, which he so cheerfully denies), I must, not without regret, be too brief upon preliminaries, lest I should take up the space necessary for the larger controversy later on.
Therefore, it is only in a very summary manner that I can deal with the writer’s presentation of the rise of the Roman power and of the beginnings of the Empire; that is, with the unity of the European world as it was prepared by Divine Providence for the advent of the Catholic Church: the noble antique soil in which was planted, as alone worthy of it, that institution whereby alone Man can be put in tune, or, even in temporal matters, a right civilization preserved.
As may be imagined, Mr. Wells on approaching the critical point in the drama of Human History, allows his anti-Christian enthusiasm more rein than he has given it hitherto, and the Roman Empire—because it was the foundation upon which our civilization was built through the action of our religion—moves him to an excited wrath in which he loses all historical sense, and curses at random.
It would be wearisome to repeat again the excellences which this department of the book also presents: its accuracy in date, its lucidity in expression: but a third excellence, which Mr. Wells usually has, proportion in statement—the essence of good précis writing, and therefore of good summarization in History—here fails him. The reason of this is that he takes up, of the few pages allotted to him, far too much space in violent abuse. I think I had better give the reader a short list of these vituperations, in order to make him understand the state of mind in which our author approaches the majestic origins of Europe.
On page 259 he is reluctantly “forced” to repeat his grave criticism that the Græco-Roman civilization had no printing press. On page 260 he expresses his “astonishment” that they did not hand printed copies of the measures about to be discussed round their assemblies, especially the Roman Senate. In the same page he points out that the failure of popular government towards the end of the Republic was due to a lack of Board Schools. A wholly disproportionate amount of the next few pages is devoted to diatribes against Cato the Elder. He begins as “a small but probably very disagreeable child of two.” He is a hypocrite who “poses as a champion of religion and public morality”; he “carries on a lifelong war against everything that is young, gracious or pleasant”; and therefore he was, of course (after much more abuse of the same sort), “the type of man that rose to prominence in Rome” (p. 265).
Rome, successful in her gigantic battle for life against Carthage, was “a nation so cowardly that she had to destroy her enemy,” and she is again “a cowardly victor” on page 268. (Mr. Wells understands so little of Paganism that he seems to think Carthage would have spared Rome.) She proceeds to “an ungracious expansion of power abroad,” and the whole great age of our foundation is one (p. 269) of “general grim baseness.” The Senate, on page 270, is “a Senatorial gang,” in which Cato (who occupies an absurdly exaggerated place) especially shows “interest and natural malice.” On page 271 you get “pitiless greed,” and meanwhile, of course, “the military efficiency of the Romans had been steadily declining”—but, indeed, the singular incapacity, not only of the Roman people, but of all soldiers, for war is one of Mr. Wells’s standing grievances. The Senate, on the first failure against Carthage, passed “from a bullying mood to one of extreme panic.” On page 273 we have a pleasant contrast between the horrid ignorance of the Roman citizens and the enlightenment of the modern British Trade Union leaders, the latter of whom have done what no Roman ever thought of doing: to wit, started a Labour College. On page 273 Rome is “subcivilized.” It is compared to “Neanderthal man”; its religion “carries us far back beyond the days of decent gods to the age of Shamanism and magic”; and there is a moving contrast between the antique leader searching the entrails of animal victims after a sacrifice for augury, and the more dignified gestures of a British Lord Chancellor.
On page 274 Rome is again “Neanderthal”; and on page 275 there is yet another contrast between the gladiatorial shows and our own more humane sports—though there is no actual mention of either football or golf. It reminds one a little of the famous remark of the old lady who was seeing the death of Cleopatra on the stage, and said, “How different from the home life of our own good Queen Victoria”!
On page 277 the Roman senators and the great equestrians are “vulgar and greedy spirits.” But do not imagine that the poorer Romans were any better; they, in their turn, are “ignorant, unstable, and equally greedy”; and, once again, on this same page, all these Romans are “Neanderthals.” On page 278 he is able to answer the question which puzzled the Ancients in the later days of the Roman Republic. Those mighty men asked themselves, even while they were founding a world state, in what they were to blame, confessed their errors, and sought remedy perpetually. But in this book “we” have the advantage over them. “We (that is, Mr. Wells) who can look at the problem with a larger presentation can see what had happened to Rome.” On the same page there is a doubtful admission that Tiberius Gracchus may have been “more like an honest man” than the other cowards and mediocrities of the Roman State. But Gracchus, again, was defective compared with the modern authors of Outlines of History in that “he did not understand how much easier it is to shift population from the land into the towns than to return it.” However, he stands excused; for it seems that even to-day, in spite of progress, “few people” other than the Author “understand” this wearisome and age-long truism.