He would accept slave-dealing, witch-burning, the Star Chamber, the whipping-post, the pillory, and the forcing of evidence by torture, as comfortably as we now accept the cat-o'-nine-tails, the silent system, and the gallows.
He would look upon education, sanitation, and science as black magic and defiance of God.
He would never have learnt from Copernicus, Newton, Harvey, Bacon, Spencer, Darwin, Edison, or Pasteur.
He would be ignorant of Shakespeare, Cromwell, the French Revolution, the Emancipation of Slaves, the Factory Acts, and the Household Franchise.
He would never have heard of electricity, steam, cheap books, the free Press, the School Board, the Fabian Society.
He would never have heard of the Australian Colonies, of the Indian Empire, of the United States of America, nor of Buonaparte, George Washington, Nelson, Queen Elizabeth, Abraham Lincoln, nor Florence Nightingale.
Not one of these great men, not one of these great things would form a part of his environment.
Nor may we lightly claim that he, himself, would be of a more highly developed type, that his propensities would be more humane, his nature more refined.
For we must not overlook such examples as Alfred the Great, Joan of Arc, Chaucer, Mallory, and Sir Thomas More.
We must not forget that the refined John Wesley believed in witch-burning, that the refined Jeremy Taylor thought all the millions born in heathen darkness would be doomed to eternal torment.