Of these six, only one (the fifth, that on the connection of sea level with glaciation) is a definite error of over-emphasis upon my part.
The first, my ignorance of his remarkable proficiency in modern language (including Portuguese), is more than natural, because he had made no use of such knowledge: nevertheless, I shall correct it in my book.
The second is wholly insignificant, and turns merely upon Mr. Wells’s misunderstanding of my use of inverted commas in a particular case.
In the third, about Vialleton, he is simply wrong, and, what is worse, pretends acquaintance with a book of which he clearly knows nothing.
So is he wrong about the fourth. Mr. Wells’s definite affirmation for popular consumption of a theory exploded more than thirty years ago was disgraceful.
On the sixth point, misreading due to Mr. Wells’s own confused order, I have promised him the small necessary redress, which he will receive.
Now, let me ask my reader, in conclusion, is it not remarkable that a man setting out to inform a large audience that God, and our Lord’s Divinity, and our own immortal destiny are all nonsense, doing so by a pretended “science” and favouring me as an insufficient critic of his book, can only find in some scores of my exposures of him six points, half of which tell heavily against himself, 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 it?
V
MR. WELLS SHIRKS
The most violent positive part of Mr. Wells’s attack upon me is, as I have said, his challenge upon the matter of Natural Selection, his jeer that my arguments are wholly my own, ridiculous and unsupported; and his amazing assertion, which he makes, quite naïvely and sincerely, that there has been nobody in modern criticism opposing the Darwinian theory. I think I have sufficiently exposed Mr. Wells in these particulars.
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 reader.