What then would it have been had he attempted to meet the rest of my criticism, filling up as it does much the greater part of my book?
How will he meet my objection that the man who tries to talk about the Roman Empire, and our civilisation which is its product, without any mention or conception of Latin literature and its effect, is incompetent?
How would he deal with the simple and obvious but conclusive fact that physical discovery was not the cause of religious disruption, as may be proved by the simple fact that it came after and not before that disruption?
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 were?
What will he make of my showing him to be ignorant of Catholic philosophy and Catholic definition, and yet absurdly confident in his attack on what he supposes them to be?
Anyone can see how he deals with my criticism of him in all these things. He is silent. He does not rebut it, because he cannot rebut it. If he could have done so even in the briefest and most elementary fashion, there would have been at least a few sentences to that effect in his pamphlet. There were none except one vague phrase on the contemporary doctrine of the Incarnation.
In plain English Mr. Wells shirks. He shirks the great mass of my attack. He submits in silence to the bombardment—because he has no power to reply.
Yet surely these proved absurdities on recorded history, and not his backwardness in biological science, are the main thing he has to meet.
It is principally through recorded human history and not through guess work upon the unknown past, that he should rely, in order to upset the Christian Faith of his readers.
The history of our race becomes a definable and concrete thing only after the establishment of record, and if he fail there manifestly—as he has failed—he fails altogether.