It is quite unscientific to tell people that a point highly debated and not yet concluded ranks as ascertained scientific fact.
It is quite unscientific, in talking of early Christian doctrine, to leave out tradition; still more is it unscientific to work on it without any knowledge of the sub-Apostolic period. It is unscientific in the highest degree to leave out an elementary mathematical argument as though it were mere juggling with figures, and to play to the gallery by saying that your critic has got some wonderful system of figures or other which nobody can follow.
The words “science” and “scientific” do not imply a smattering of biology or geology; still less do they imply mere popular materialism. They imply real knowledge, finally accepted after full enquiry upon complete evidence; and that is why there is nothing less scientific in the world than this so-called popular “science,” which is perpetually putting forward exploded guesses of the last century as ascertained facts.
As for muddle-headedness, what can be more muddle-headed than mixing up the general theory of evolution with the particular (and now moribund) materialist theory of Natural Selection? And yet that is what Mr. Wells is perpetually doing!
It is true that a great many other people do it too, but that is no excuse. The whole of his argument on pages 18, 19 and 20 is precisely of that kind. It would be incredible to me that any man could get confused between two such completely separate ideas had I not most wearisome and repeated experience of it—and here is Mr. Wells repeating it again!
The general theory of transformism (which itself is now subjected to a very heavy and increasing modern attack) may be compared to saying that a man travelled from London to Birmingham. But the theory of Natural Selection may be compared to saying that he travelled by motor-car and not by railway.
Now suppose a man on trial for his life for a murder which had taken place not on the railway, but by the roadside between the two towns. The whole issue turns upon whether the prisoner had travelled by motor-car or by railway. What should we say of Counsel for the Defence who confused these two issues and thought that the prosecution was concerned merely with the man’s going from one town to the other, and not with the road he travelled? I do not know whether the judge would stop him or no, but I know that Counsel for the Crown would walk round him. He would say, “The issue is not whether the man went from London to Birmingham; we grant that. The point is whether he went by motor-car or by railway.” The only issue in the controversy, which Mr. Wells has both misunderstood and rashly engaged in, is upon the agency of Evolution, not upon Evolution itself. Yet he has confused the two!
Another example of bad muddle-headedness is his mixing up the Catholic use of relics and the Catholic use of sacred images with the unwarranted illustration of the unknown prehistoric past, and the unwarranted basing of a detailed conclusion upon the insufficient evidence of a few bones.
I say in my criticism of Mr. Wells, and I say quite rightly, that to put forward a picture of an imaginary being called “Eoanthropus,” giving him a particular weapon and gait and gesture, and an expression (which, as I have said, made him very like one of my acquaintance), was utterly unwarranted upon the exceedingly doubtful evidence of the fragments called “The Piltdown skull.” Sacred images in Catholic use are not—and surely everybody ought to know that—attempts at reconstruction, still less are they fakes to try and get people to believe that, for instance, an Archangel has goose wings and curly hair. They are symbols; are powerful and useful aids to devotion, not reconstructions.
Nor are relics in any way parallel to fossil evidences. We venerate a relic of St. Agnes (such as I am glad to say I have in my house), both because it is a striking memorial of that very holy witness to the Faith, who gave up her life for it, and because (what I will not debate here) we believe that the sanctity of the person can upon occasion give virtue and power to such things. But we do not say, “In case you do not believe St. Agnes ever existed, here is a fragment of her bone.” To mix up two things so entirely different is muddle-headedness turned glorious.