{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_72333/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_72333","id":"gutenberg_72333","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72333","summary":null,"tags":["Belloc, Hilaire, 1870-1953","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: History - Other","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946. Outline of history"],"text":"MR. BELLOC OBJECTS\n  TO \u201cTHE OUTLINE OF HISTORY\u201d\n\n\n[Illustration: Hilaire Belloc]\n\n\n\n\n                           MR. BELLOC OBJECTS\n                      TO \u201cTHE OUTLINE OF HISTORY\u201d\n\n                                   BY\n                              H. G. WELLS\n\n\n                            _With Portraits_\n\n\n                        NEW [Illustration] YORK\n                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY\n\n\n\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1926,\n                       BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY\n\n                             [Illustration]\n\n\n             MR. BELLOC OBJECTS TO \u201cTHE OUTLINE OF HISTORY\u201d\n                                 --B--\n                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA\n\n\n\n\nFOREWORD\n\n\nIn the autumn of 1925 and the spring and summer of 1926 there was\npublished a revised and illustrated version of the _Outline of\nHistory_, by Mr. H.\u00a0G. Wells. There followed a series of articles by\nMr. Belloc attacking this _Outline_ and Mr. Wells. These articles were\npublished in the Catholic _Universe_, in the _Southern Cross_ of Cape\nColony, in the American _Catholic Bulletin_, and possibly elsewhere.\nEvery fortnight, keeping pace with the issue of the _Outline_, these\nattacks appeared; in all, twenty-four voluminous articles. They were\ngrossly personal and provocative in tone, and no doubt a great joy\nand comfort to the faithful. Mr. Wells prepared a series of articles\nin reply; and as no one outside the public of these Catholic journals\nseemed to have heard of Mr. Belloc\u2019s attacks, he offered them to the\neditors concerned, proposing, if necessary, to give the use of this\ninteresting matter to them without payment. Six articles he asked to\nhave published--in reply to twenty-four. This offering was declined\nvery earnestly by these editors. To the editor of the Catholic\n_Universe_ Mr. Wells protested in the terms of the following letter:--\n\n    MY DEAR SIR,\n\n    I am sorry to receive your letter of May 19th. May I point out to\n    you that Mr. Belloc has been attacking my reputation as a thinker,\n    a writer, an impartial historian, and an educated person for\n    four-and-twenty fortnights in the _Universe_? He has misquoted; he\n    has misstated. Will your Catholic public tolerate no reply?\n\nUnder the stimulus of this remonstrance, the editor of the _Universe_,\nafter a month\u2019s delay and various consultations with Mr. Belloc and\nthe directors of his paper, offered Mr. Wells the \u201copportunity of\ncorrecting definite points of fact upon which he might have been\nmisrepresented,\u201d but declined to allow him to defend his views or\nexamine Mr. Belloc\u2019s logic and imputations in his columns. Mr. Wells\nwas disinclined for a series of wrangles upon what might or might\nnot be a \u201cpoint of fact.\u201d He then offered his articles to various\nnon-Catholic papers, but, with one accord, they expressed their lack\nof interest in either Mr. Belloc himself or in his exposition of\nCatholic ideas about natural selection, the origin of man, and the\ngeneral course of history. Yet it seems to Mr. Wells that, regarded\nas a mental sample, Mr. Belloc is not without significance, and that\nthe examination of the contemporary Catholic attitude towards the\nfundamental facts of history is a matter of interest beyond Catholic\ncircles. Accordingly he has decided to issue these articles in the\nform of a book, and he has urged the publishers to advertise them, as\nfreely as may be permitted, in the Catholic press. He has retained the\n\u201ccross-heads\u201d customary in journalistic writing.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                    PAGE\n    I  MR. BELLOC\u2019S ARTS OF CONTROVERSY                               13\n\n   II  THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION STATED                         29\n\n  III  MR. BELLOC AS A SPECIMEN CRITIC OF NATURAL SELECTION           44\n\n   IV  MR. BELLOC\u2019S ADVENTURES AMONG THE SUB-MEN: MANIFEST TERROR\n         OF THE NEANDERTHALER                                         64\n\n    V FIXITY OR PROGRESS                                              80\n\n\n\n\n  MR. BELLOC OBJECTS\n  TO \u201cTHE OUTLINE OF HISTORY\u201d\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nMR. BELLOC\u2019S ARTS OF CONTROVERSY\n\n\nI am the least controversial of men. Public disputations have rarely\nattracted me. For years I have failed to respond to Mr. Henry Arthur\nJones, who long ago invented a set of opinions for me and invited me to\ndefend them with an enviable persistence and vigour. Occasionally I may\nhave corrected some too gross public misstatement about me--too often\nI fear with the acerbity of the inexperienced. But now, in my sixtieth\nyear, I find myself drawn rather powerfully into a disputation with Mr.\nHilaire Belloc. I bring an unskilled pen to the task.\n\nI am responsible for an _Outline of History_ which has had a certain\nvogue. I will assume that it is known by name to the reader. It is a\ncareful summary of man\u2019s knowledge of past time. It has recently been\nreissued with considerable additions in an illustrated form, and Mr.\nBelloc has made a great attack upon it. He declares that I am violently\nantagonistic to the Catholic Church, an accusation I deny very\nearnestly, and he has produced a \u201cCompanion\u201d to this _Outline_ of mine,\nfollowing up the periodical issue, part by part, in the _Universe_ of\nLondon, in the _Catholic Bulletin_ of St. Paul, Minnesota, in the\n_Southern Cross_ of Cape Colony, and possibly elsewhere, in which my\nalleged errors are exposed and confuted.\n\nIn the enthusiasm of advertisement before the \u201cCompanion\u201d began to\nappear, these newspapers announced a work that would put Mr. Belloc\namong the great classical Catholic apologists, but I should imagine\nthat this was before the completed manuscript of Mr. Belloc\u2019s work had\ncome to hand, and I will not hold Catholics at large responsible for\nall Mr. Belloc says and does.\n\nIt is with this _Companion to the Outline of History_ that I am to deal\nhere. It raises a great number of very interesting questions, and there\nis no need to discuss the validity of the charge of Heresy that is\nlevelled against me personally. I will merely note that I am conscious\nof no animus against Catholicism, and that in my _Outline_ I accept the\ngospels as historical documents of primary value, defend Christianity\nagainst various aspersions of Gibbon\u2019s, and insist very strongly upon\nthe r\u00f4le of the Church in preserving learning in Europe, consolidating\nChristendom, and extending knowledge from a small privileged class to\nthe whole community. I do not profess to be a Christian. I am as little\ndisposed to take sides between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant. Mr.\nBelloc will protest against that \u201cRoman,\u201d but he must forgive it; I\nknow no other way of distinguishing between his Church and Catholics\nnot in communion with it, as I am between a pterodactyl and a bird.\n\n\nDISCONCERTING POSE OF MR. BELLOC\n\nIn this art of controversy it is evident that great importance attaches\nto pose. This is plain from the very outset of Mr. Belloc\u2019s apologia.\nFrom the beginning I have to be put in my place, and my relationship\nto Mr. Belloc has to be defined. Accustomed as I am to see Mr. Belloc\ndodging about in my London club, and in Soho and thereabouts, and even\noccasionally appearing at a dinner-party, compactly stout, rather\nbreathless and always insistently garrulous, I am more than a little\namazed at his opening. He has suddenly become aloof from me. A great\ngulf of manner yawns between us. \u201cHullo, Belloc!\u201d is frozen on my\nlips, dies unuttered. He advances upon me in his Introduction with a\ngravity of utterance, a dignity of gesture, rare in sober, God-fearing\nmen. There is a slow, formal compliment or so. I have, I learn, \u201ca\ndeservedly popular talent in fiction.\u201d I am sincere, an honest soul.\nMy intentions are worthy. But the note changes; he declares I am a\n\u201cProtestant writing for Protestants,\u201d and there is danger that my\n_Outline_ may fall into Catholic hands. Some Catholics may even be\ninfected with doubt. His style thickens with emotion at this thought,\nand he declares: \u201cOne Catholic disturbed in his faith is more\nimportant than twenty thousand or a hundred thousand or a million of\nthe average reading public of England and America.\u201d That is why he\nis giving me his attention, syndicating these articles and swelling\nhimself up so strongly against me. That is why he now proposes to\nexhibit and explain and expose me in the sight of all mankind. It is\ncontroversy, and everyday manners are in abeyance.\n\nThe controversial pose reveals itself further. The compliments and\ncivilities thin out and vanish. Mr. Belloc becomes more magisterial,\nrelatively larger, relatively graver, with every paragraph. He assumes\nmore definitely the quality of a great scholar of European culture\nand European reputation, a trained, distinguished, universally\naccepted historian. With what is evidently the dexterity of an expert\ncontroversialist and with an impressiveness all his own, he seems to\nlook over and under and round the man he knows, and sketches in the man\nhe proposes to deal with, his limitations, his pitiful limitations, the\ncharacteristics, the disagreeable characteristics, that disfigure him.\nIt is a new Wells, a most extraordinary person. I learn with amazement\nthe particulars with which it is necessary to instruct that Catholic\nsoul in danger before the matter of my book can be considered. I see\nmyself in the lurid illumination of Catholic truth.\n\n\nREMARKABLE PORTRAIT OF MR. WELLS\n\nTo begin with, I am \u201can intense patriot.\u201d This will surprise many\nreaders. I dread its effect on Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, whose favourite\ntune upon the megaphone for years has been that I am the friend of\nevery country but my own. Will he intervene with a series of articles\nto \u201cMy dear Belloc\u201d? I hope not. I might plead that almost any chapter\nof the _Outline of History_ could be quoted against this proposition.\nBut Mr. Belloc is ruthless; he offers no evidence for his statement,\nno foothold for a counter-plea. He just says it, very clearly, very\nemphatically several times over, and he says it, as I realise very\nsoon, because it is the necessary preliminary to his next still more\ndamaging exposures.\n\nThey are that I am an Englishman \u201cof the Home Counties and London\nSuburbs\u201d--Mr. Belloc, it seems, was born all over Europe--that my\nculture is entirely English, that I know nothing of any language or\nliterature or history or science but that of England. And from this\nhis creative invention sweeps on to a description of this new Wells\nhe is evoking to meet his controversial needs. My admiration grows. I\nresist an impulse to go over at once to Mr. Belloc\u2019s side. This, for\nexample, is splendid. This new Wells, this suburban English Protestant,\nhas written his _Outline of History_ because, says Mr. Belloc, \u201che\ndoes not know that \u2018foreigners\u2019 (as he would call them) have general\nhistories.\u201d\n\nThat \u201cas he would call them\u201d is the controversial Mr. Belloc rising to\nhis best.\n\nMr. Belloc, I may note in passing, does not cite any of these general\nhistories to which he refers. It would surely make an interesting\nlist and help the Catholic soul in danger to better reading. The\nAmerican reader, at whose prejudices this stuff about my patriotism\nis presumably aimed, would surely welcome a competing Outline by a\n\u201cforeigner.\u201d Mr. Belloc might do worse things than a little translation\nwork.\n\nThen the Royal College of Science shrivels at his touch to a mechanics\u2019\ninstitute, and the new Wells, I learn, \u201cdoes really believe from the\nbottom of his heart all that he read in the text-books of his youth.\u201d\nThe picture of this new Wells, credulous, uncritical devourer of the\ntext-books supplied by his suburban institute, inveterate Protestant,\ngrows under the pen of this expert controversialist. I have next to\nbe presented as a low-class fellow with a peculiar bias against the\n\u201cGentry of my own country,\u201d and this is accordingly done. \u201cGentlemen\u201d\nwith whom I have quarrelled are hinted at darkly--a pretty touch of\nfantasy. A profound and incurable illiteracy follows as a matter of\ncourse.\n\n\nGATHERING COURAGE OF MR. BELLOC\n\nMr. Belloc\u2019s courage gathers with the elaboration of his sketch. He\nis the type to acquiesce readily in his own statements, and one can\nsee him persuading himself as he goes along that this really is the\nWells he is up against. If so, what is there to be afraid of? If\nthere is a twinge of doubt, he can always go back and read what he\nhas written. The phraseology loses its earlier discretion, gets more\npluckily abusive. Presently words like \u201cignorance\u201d and \u201cblunders\u201d\nand \u201climited instruction\u201d come spluttering from those ready nibs.\nFollows \u201cchildish\u201d and \u201cpitiable\u201d and \u201cantiquated nonsense.\u201d Nothing\nto substantiate any of it--just saying it. So Mr. Belloc goes his way\nalong the primrose path of controversy. He takes a fresh sip or so from\nhis all too complaisant imagination. New inspirations come. I have\n\u201ccopied\u201d things from the \u201cwrong\u201d books. That \u201ccopied\u201d is good! One\ncan see that base malignant Wells fellow, in his stuffy room all hung\nwith Union Jacks, with the \u201cwrong,\u201d the \u201c_Protestant_\u201d book flattened\nout before him, copying, copying; his tongue following his laborious\npen. Presently I read: \u201cIt is perhaps asking too much of our author\nto adopt a strictly scientific attitude.\u201d This, from an adept in that\nmixture of stale politics and gossip which passed for history in the\ndays of Mr. Belloc\u2019s reading, to even the least of Huxley\u2019s students,\nis stupendous!\n\nStill he swells and swells with self-importance and self-induced\ncontempt for his silent and invisible antagonist. The pen runs on, for\ndoes not the Catholic press wait for its latest great apologist? The\nthin film of oily politeness in the opening paragraphs is long since\ngone and done with, and Mr. Hilaire Belloc is fully himself again and\nremains himself, except for one or two returns to patronising praise\nand the oil squirt, for the rest of these remarkable papers.\n\nHis are, I suppose, the accepted manners of controversy--and what\nwonderful manners they are! I note them, but I cannot emulate them.\n\nThere is, however, one reference to the unlettered suburbanism of\nthis ideal Wells too good to lose. I had almost let it slip by. It\nis an allusion to a certain publication in French. \u201cThere may be no\ntranslation,\u201d Mr. Belloc throws out superbly at the height of his form,\n\u201cbut Mr. Wells ought to have heard of\u201d--the out-of-date monograph\nin question. \u201cThere may be no translation...\u201d! How feeble sounds my\nprotest that for all practical purposes I read French as well as I do\nEnglish, and that in all probability if it came to using a German,\nSpanish, Portuguese, or Italian scientific work I could give Mr. Belloc\npoints and a beating.\n\n\nREFLECTIONS UPON THE REAL MR. BELLOC\n\nBut I have said enough to justify incidentally my habitual avoidance\nof the arts of controversy. I cannot inflate myself in this fashion.\nI cannot do the counter to this attitude. I was born and I shall die\n\u201cfamiliar.\u201d What seems to make Mr. Belloc feel brave and happy would\nmake me feel sick. On this he has presumed overmuch. There are limits\nto my notorious gentleness and modesty, and they have been reached\nby Mr. Belloc in these articles. His skill is undeniable; no other\nwriter could better his unpremeditated condescension, his apparently\ninadvertent insults. And yet the facts beneath all this insolent\nposturing are quite well known and easily verifiable. I cannot imagine\nwhom it is intended to deceive for any length of time.\n\nMr. Belloc is a man four years my junior, and his academic career was\nbriefer and not more brilliant than mine. Since he came down from\nOxford to the world of London thirty years ago, he has done no original\nhistorical work of any distinction. He has been a popular writer as\nI have been a popular writer, and he is no more if no less a scholar\nthan I am. There has been much incidental and inconsequent brightness\nin his discursive career--funny verses and stories, an amusing rather\nthan a serious period in Parliament, much pamphleteering, lecturing\nand speaking; he has been active and erratic; now he would be\nurging on an anti-Semitic campaign; now, in association with Horatio\nBottomley, attempting to hound Masterman, his old friend and rival,\nout of politics; the war made him the most confident of military\n\u201cexperts,\u201d and he has done quite a number of clever revivifications\nof this or that historical event. That is his record. It gives him\na respectable position in the republic of letters, in which also\nmy position is respectable. No doubt he has every right and very\nconsiderable qualifications for the criticism of such a popular work\nas my _Outline_. But there is nothing in his career and nothing in his\nquality to justify this pose of erudition and insolent superiority\nhe assumes towards me, and which he has made an integral part of his\nattack. He has assumed it entirely in relation to this controversy. He\nhas thrown ordinary courtesy and good manners to the winds because only\nin that way can he hope for a controversial advantage over me.\n\n\nTHE CLUE TO MR. BELLOC\u2019S DISCONCERTING POSE\n\nThis disconcerting pose is part of his attack. That is why I am obliged\nto discuss it here. Upon many points the attack is almost pure pose;\nthere is no tangible argument at all. It is very important to note that\nand bear that in mind. It has to be borne in mind when Mr. Belloc is\naccused of inordinate vanity or of not knowing his place in the world.\nI doubt even if he is really very vain. I realised long ago that his\napparent arrogance is largely the self-protection of a fundamentally\nfearful man. He is a stout fellow in a funk. He is the sort of man\nwho talks loud and fast for fear of hearing the other side. There is\na frightened thing at the heart of all this burly insolence. He has a\nfaith to defend, and he is not sure of his defence. That mitigates much\nof his offence, even if it mitigates little of his offensiveness.\n\nLet me say a word or so more of excuse and explanation for him. These\npersonalities of his are, so to speak, not a personal matter. There is\nmore in them than that. Mr. Belloc\u2019s attack upon my _Outline_ does not\nstand alone among his activities; it is part of a larger controversy\nhe wages against the modern, the non-Catholic vision of the world. He\nhas carried on that controversy since his Balliol days. The exigencies\nthat oblige him to pretend, against his better knowledge and common\ncivility, that I am petty and provincial and patriotic and wilfully\nignorant and pitifully out-of-date, oblige him to pretend as much about\nmost of those who stand for modern science and a modern interpretation\nof history. He would pretend as hard about Sir Ray Lankester, for\nexample, or about Professor Gilbert Murray or Sir Harry Johnston or\nProfessor Barker, as he does about me. It is a general system of\npretence. It is a necessary part of--I will not say of _the_ Catholic\nattitude, but of _his_ Catholic attitude towards modern knowledge.\n\nThe necessity for a pose involving this pretence is not very difficult\nto understand. Long before Mr. Belloc embarked upon the present dispute\nhe had become the slave of a tactical fiction, which reiteration had\nmade a reality for him. He evoked the fiction as early, I believe, as\nhis Oxford days. It may have been very effective at Oxford--among the\nundergraduates. Then perhaps it was consciously a defensive bluff,\nbut certainly it is no longer that. He has come at last to believe\nabsolutely in this creature of his imagination. He has come to believe\nthis: that there is a vast \u201cmodern European\u201d culture of which the\nEnglish-speaking world knows nothing, of which the non-Catholic world\nknows nothing, and with which he is familiar. It is on his side.\nIt is always on his side. It is simply and purely Belloccian. He\ncertainly believes it is there. It sustains his faith. It assuages the\ngnawing attacks of self-criticism that must come to him in the night.\nThroughout these papers he is constantly referring to this imaginary\nstuff--without ever coming to precisions. Again and again and again and\nagain--and again and again and again, he alludes to this marvellous\n\u201cEuropean\u201d science and literature, beyond our ken.\n\nHe does not quote it; it does not exist for him to quote; but he\nbelieves that it exists. He waves his hand impressively in the\ndirection in which it is supposed to be. It is his stand-by, his\nrefuge, his abiding fortress. But, in order to believe in it, it is\nnecessary for him to believe that no other English-speaking men can\neven read French, and that their scepticism about it is based on some\n\u201cprovincial\u201d prejudice or some hatred of Catholics, or southern people,\nor \u201cDagoes,\u201d or \u201cforeigners,\u201d or what you will. That is why _Nature_\nwilfully ignores the wonderful science of this \u201cEurope\u201d; and why our\nRoyal Society has no correspondence with it. But he has to imagine it\nis there and make his readers imagine it is there, and that there is\nthis conspiracy of prejudice to ignore it, before he can even begin\nto put up any appearance of a case against such a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 of current\nknowledge as the _Outline of History_.\n\n\nGRACEFUL CONCESSIONS TO MR. BELLOC\n\nAll this rough and apparently irrelevant stuff about his own great\nbreadth and learning and my profound ignorance and provincialism,\nto which he has devoted his two introductory papers, is therefore\nthe necessary prelude to putting over this delusion. That stream of\ndepreciation is not the wanton personal onslaught one might suppose\nit to be at the first blush. If he has appeared to glorify himself\nand belittle me, it is for greater controversial ends than a mere\npersonal score. We are dealing with a controversialist here and a great\napologist, and for all I know these may be quite legitimate methods in\nthis, to me, unfamiliar field.\n\nFew people will be found to deny Mr. Belloc a considerable amplitude of\nmind in his undertaking, so soon as they get thus far in understanding\nhim. Before he could even set about syndicating this _Companion to the\nOutline of History_ he had to incite a partisan receptivity in the\nCatholic readers to whom he appeals, by declaring that a violent hatred\nfor their Church is the guiding motive of my life. He had to ignore\na considerable array of facts to do that, and he has ignored them\nwith great courage and steadfastness. He had to arouse an indifferent\nCatholic public to a sense of urgent danger by imposing this figure of\na base, inveterate, and yet finally contemptible enemy upon it. His is\na greater task than mere dragon-slaying. He had to create the dragon\nbefore he could become the champion. And then, with his syndication\narrangements complete, while abusing me industriously for ignorance,\nbackwardness, and general intellectual backwoodism, he had to write the\nwhole of these articles without once really opening that Humbert safe\nof knowledge which is his sole capital in this controversy. Time after\ntime he refers to it. Never once does he quote it. At most he may give\nus illusive peeps....\n\nNow and then as we proceed I shall note these illusive peeps.\n\nI can admire great effort even when it is ill-directed, and to show\nhow little I bear him a grudge for the unpleasant things he has induced\nhimself to write about me, and for the still more unpleasant things\nhe tempts me--though I resist with a success that gratifies me--to\nwrite about him, I contemplate a graceful compliment to Mr. Belloc.\nIn spite of the incurable ignorance of French and that \u201cdirty Dago\u201d\nattitude towards foreigners Mr. Belloc has so agreeably put upon me,\nit is my habit to spend a large part of the winter in a house I lease\namong the olive terraces of Provence. There is a placard in one corner\nof my study which could be rather amusingly covered with the backs of\ndummy books. I propose to devote that to a collection of Mr. Belloc\u2019s\nauthorities. There shall be one whole row at least of the Bulletins of\nthe Madame Humbert Society, and all the later researches of the Belloc\nAcademy of Anonymous Europeans, bound in bluff leather. There will be\n_Finis Darwinis_ by Hilario Belloccio, and _Hist. Eccles._ by Hilarius\nBelloccius. I may have occasion to refer to other leading authorities\nin the course of this controversy. I shall add to it as we proceed.\n\nAnd so, having examined, explained, disposed of, and in part apologised\nfor, Mr. Belloc\u2019s personalities and the pervading inelegance of his\nmanners, I shall turn with some relief from this unavoidably personal\nretort to questions of a more general interest. I propose as my first\nstudy of these modern Catholic apologetics, so valiantly produced by\nMr. Belloc and so magnificently published and displayed by the Catholic\npress, to follow our hero\u2019s courageous but unsteady progress through\nthe mysteries of Natural Selection. And after that we shall come to\nOriginal Sin and Human Origins in the light of Mr. Belloc\u2019s science and\nthe phantom science of those phantom naturalists and anthropologists he\ncalls to his assistance.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nTHE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION STATED\n\n\nMy first article upon Mr. Belloc\u2019s _Companion to the Outline of\nHistory_ dealt, much against my inclination and as charitably and\namiably as possible, with the oddities of Mr. Belloc\u2019s manner and\nmethod, and those remarkable non-existent \u201cEuropean authorities\u201d to\nwhom he appeals habitually in moments of argumentative stress. I do\nnot propose to go on thus girding at Mr. Belloc. He is a Catholic\napologist, endorsed by Catholic authorities, and there is matter of\nvery great importance for our consideration in what he has to say about\nthe history of life and mankind.\n\nAfter his second paper is finished his abuse of me becomes merely\nincidental or indirect. He goes on to a staggering rush at Natural\nSelection. Let us see to where Catholic thought has got--if Mr. Belloc\nis to be trusted--in relation to this very fundamental matter.\n\nIt is Mr. Belloc\u2019s brilliant careless way to begin most of his\narguments somewhere about the middle and put the end first. His\nopening peroration, so to speak, is a proclamation that this \u201cNatural\nSelection\u201d--whatever it is--is \u201can old and done-for theory of\nDarwin and Wallace.\u201d It is \u201ca laughing-stock for half a generation\namong competent men.\u201d Mr. George Bernard Shaw does not believe in\nit! G.\u00a0B.\u00a0S. among the Fathers! That wonderful non-existent \u201clatest\nEuropean work\u201d which plays so large a part in Mr. Belloc\u2019s dialectic is\nsummoned briefly, its adverse testimony is noted, and it is dismissed\nto the safe again. And then there is a brief statement of how these\ntwo vile fellows, Darwin and Wallace, set out upon this reprehensible\ntheorising. What a ruthless expos\u00e9 it is of the true motives of\nscientific people!\n\n    \u201cThe process of thought was as follows:\n\n    \u201c\u2018There is no Mind at work in the universe; therefore changes of\n    this sort must come from blind chance or at least _mechanically_.\n    At all costs we must get rid of the idea of design: of a desired\n    end conceived in a Creative Mind. Here is a theory which will make\n    the whole process entirely mechanical and dead, and get rid of the\n    necessity for a Creator.\u2019\u201d\n\nAnd so having invented and then as it were visited and spat upon the\nderided and neglected tomb of Natural Selection and assured us that\nGod, Mr. Shaw, \u201cEuropean opinion,\u201d and all good Catholics are upon his\nside, Mr. Belloc plucks up courage and really begins to write about\nNatural Selection.\n\n\nNATURAL SELECTION IS PURE COMMON-SENSE\n\nWhat is this Natural Selection which has been dead for half a century,\nbut which Mr. Belloc still exerts himself industriously through four\nlong papers to kill all over again? It is the purest common-sense, the\nmost obvious deduction from obvious facts. I have set out the idea as\nplainly as I could in the _Outline of History_ Mr. Belloc is attacking.\nIt is put so plainly there that, before he can begin to argue against\nit, he has to misstate it; he has to tell the story all over again\nin his own words and get it suitably askew. It was quite open to\nhim to quote from my account, but he preferred to compile his own\nmisstatement. Indeed, in all this argument against Natural Selection\nhe never once quotes my actual words. He paraphrases throughout.\nHe has put some words between inverted commas in one place, so as\ninadvertently to produce the impression that they are mine, but they\nare not mine.\n\nNow the facts upon which the idea of Natural Selection rests are\nmatters of universal knowledge. \u201cEvery species of living thing is\ncontinually dying and being born again as a multitude of fresh\nindividuals\u201d; that is the primary fact. No species seems to be\nperfectly adapted to its conditions, and even the happiest species\ntends to multiply until it is in a state of need and pressure. So\nfar surely we are dealing with things beyond dispute. And next comes\nthe fact of individuality. Every living unit is individual with\na difference of its own. Every individual has its own distinctive\ndifferences, and each of these differences may or may not be an\nadvantage or a disadvantage. Individuals with advantageous differences\nwill generally get on better in life, prosper and so be able to breed\nmore freely, than those with disadvantageous differences. Offspring\nhave a tendency to repeat the distinctive differences of their parents.\nTherefore, taking a species as a whole by the million or billion or\nmillion billion--for few species of animals or plants are represented\nby fewer individuals than a million--there will be in each successive\ngeneration a greater number of individuals with the differences that\nare advantageous relative to the number with disadvantages. In other\nwords, the average of the species will have moved more or less in the\ndirection of the advantageous differences, whatever they may be, and\nhowever numerous they may be. If, for example, the species is chased\nand has to climb or run for it, there will be rather more good climbers\nand sprinters in the new generation. There may be other dangers and\nother needs; they will not affect the premium set on quickness and the\nfate of the slow. And if the circumstances of the species continue to\npress in the same direction, the movement of the average will be in\nthe same direction in this respect for so long as they continue to\npress. Over a few score or even a few hundred generations, and under\nconditions not very strenuous, a species may not change very much.\nIt may seem to be _fixed_ in its general characteristics, just as the\ncontinents seem to be fixed in their general outline. But, as the range\nof time extends and the pressure of necessity continues, the change\nbecomes more striking.\n\n\nNATURAL SELECTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ORIGIN OF VARIATIONS\n\nThat is the process of Natural Selection, the \u201claughing-stock\u201d of\nMr. Belloc\u2019s mysterious conclave of \u201cEuropean\u201d savants. Natural\nSelection has nothing to do with the reason for the differences between\nindividuals. It has no more to do with those than gravitation has to\ndo with the differences in the heaviness of different substances. But\nit is necessary to state as much here, because in some queer muddled\nway Mr. Belloc seems to be persuaded that it has. These differences\nmay arise by pure chance; they may come about through the operation of\ncomplex laws, they may come in shoals and have their seasons. These\nthings have nothing to do with Natural Selection.\n\nNow, Wallace and Darwin were two excellent Europeans who happened to\nbe interested in natural history. In spite of the sinister motives\ninvented for them by Mr. Belloc, I doubt if any Catholic sufficiently\neducated to have read their lives will agree that they had even a\nlatent animus against Catholic truth or even a subconscious desire to\n\u201cget rid of a Creator\u201d in their minds. They no more thought of \u201cgetting\nrid of a Creator\u201d when humbly and industriously they gathered their\nfacts and put fact to fact than an honest bricklayer thinks of \u201cgetting\nrid of a Creator\u201d when he lays his bricks with care and builds a sound\npiece of wall. They went about the world studying natural history.\nThey considered life with a patience and thoroughness and freedom\nfrom preconceptions beyond the imagination of a man of Mr. Belloc\u2019s\nhabits. They found no such \u201cfixity of species\u201d as he is inspired to\nproclaim. They found much evidence of a progressive change in species,\nand they saw no reason to explain it by a resort to miracles or magic.\nA Catholic priest of the Anglican communion named Malthus had written\na very interesting and suggestive book upon over-population and the\nconsequent struggle for existence between individuals. It turned\nthe attention of both these diligent and gifted observers to just\nthat process of Natural Selection I have stated. Independently both\nof them came to the conclusions that species changed age by age and\nwithout any necessary limits, and mainly through the sieve of Natural\nSelection, and that, given a sufficient separation to reduce or prevent\ninterbreeding and a sufficient difference in the selective conditions\nat work, two parts of the same species might change in different\ndirections, so as at last to become distinct and separate species.\n\nDarwin\u2019s book upon the subject was called _The Origin of Species_.\nIt was a very modest and sufficient title. He did not even go to the\nlength of calling it the origin of genera or orders or classes. He did\nnot at first apply it to man.\n\nThis is the theory of the origin of species through Natural Selection.\nIt was not pretended by either of these pioneers that Natural Selection\nwas the sole way through which the differences of species came about.\nFor example, Darwin devoted a considerable part of his working life\nto such collateral modes of differentiation as the hypothesis that\nSexual Selection also had its share. Criticism has whittled down that\nshare to practically negligible proportions, but I note the hypothesis\nhere because it absolutely disposes of the assertion which Mr. Belloc\nhammers on the table, that the Theory of Natural Selection excludes any\nother modes of specific differentiation.\n\n\nTESTING THE THEORY\n\nVery rapidly this conception of Natural Selection was extended by\nnaturalists until it came to be regarded as the general process of\nlife. They came to realise that all species, all genera, all classes of\nlife, whatever else may be happening to them, are and always have been\nvarying through the process of Natural Selection, some rapidly, some\nslowly; some so slowly as hardly to change at all through vast ages. I\nhave stated the _a priori_ case by which, given birth and death and\nindividuality and changing conditions and sufficient time, it appears\nlogically inevitable that the change and differentiation of species\n_must_ occur, and must be now going on. If we had no material evidence\nat all it would still be possible to infer the evolution of species.\n\nThat _a priori_ case has never been answered, and it seems to me\nunanswerable. But scientific men, with their obstinate preference for\nobservation and experiment over mere logical gymnastics, rarely rest\ntheir convictions on _a priori_ cases. A sustaining scepticism is a\nmatter of conscience with them. To them an _a priori_ case is merely\na theory--that is to say, a generalisation under trial. For nearly\nthree-quarters of a century, therefore, biologists have been examining\nwhatever instances they could discover that seemed to contradict this\nassumption that the process of specific change under Natural Selection\nis the general condition of life. To this day this view is still called\nthe Theory of Natural Selection, though to a great number it has come\nto have the substantial quality of an embracing fact.\n\nIt would have been amusing if Mr. Belloc had told us more of his ideas\nof the scientific world. Apparently he knows scarcely anything of\nmuseums or laboratories or the spirit and methods of research. And\nmanifestly he has not the faintest suspicion of the way in which the\nwhole world of vital phenomena has been ransacked and scrutinised to\ntest, correct, supplement, amplify, or alter this great generalisation\nabout life. He probably shares the delusion of most other men in the\nstreet, that scientific theories are scientific finalities, that\nthey are supposed to be as ultimate as the dogmas of some infallible\nreligion. He imagines them put over chiefly by asseveration, just as\nthe assertions of a polemical journalist are put over. He has still to\nlearn that theories are trial material, testing targets, directives for\nresearch. Shooting at established theories is the normal occupation\nof the scientific investigator. Mr. Belloc\u2019s figure of the scientific\ninvestigator is probably a queer, frowsty, and often, alas! atheistical\nindividual, poking about almost aimlessly among facts in the hope of\nhitting upon some \u201cdiscovery\u201d or \u201cgetting rid of a God.\u201d He does not\nunderstand the tense relevance of the vast amount of work in progress.\nBut for three-quarters of a century the thought and work of myriads\nof people round and about the world have borne directly or almost\ndirectly upon the probing, sounding, testing, of the theory of Natural\nSelection. It stands clarified and, it would seem, impregnable to-day.\n\n\nSOME IRRELEVANT QUESTIONS\n\nAmong questions bearing upon it but not directly attacking it has\nbeen the discussion of the individual difference. For example, are\ndifferences due to individual experiences ever inherited? Or are\nonly inherent differences transmissible? What r\u00f4le is played by what\none might call \u201cnormal,\u201d relatively slight differences, and what\nby the \u201csports\u201d and abnormal births in specific change? Do species\nunder stress, and feeding on strange food or living in unaccustomed\nclimates, betray any exceptional tendency to produce abnormality? Have\nthere been, so to speak, storms and riots of variation in some cases?\nCan differences establish themselves while outer necessity remains\nneutral? Can variations amounting to specific differences in colour\nand form arise as a sort of play of the germ plasm and be tolerated\nrather than selected by nature? In what manner do normal differences\narise? What happens to differences in cases of hybridisation? Here are\nsample questions that have been the seeds of splendid work and great\narguments. Some of them were already under discussion in Darwin\u2019s time;\nhe was a pioneer in such explorations; many ideas of his have stood the\ntest of time, and many suggestions he threw out have been disproved.\nWhen some casual \u201cmay be\u201d of Darwin\u2019s is examined and set aside, it\nis the custom of polemical journalists to rush about and proclaim to\nall who may be sufficiently ill-informed to listen that Darwin is\n\u201cexploded.\u201d Such explosions of Darwin are constantly recurring like\ngun-fire near a garrison town, and still he remains. None of these\nsubsidiary questions affect the stability of this main generalisation\nof biology, the Theory of Natural Selection.\n\nThe actual attack and testing of the Theory of Natural Selection\nhave yielded negative results. The statement of the theory may have\nbeen made finer and exacter, that is all. And yet the conditions of\nits survival have been very exacting. If the theory is to stand, the\nwhole of plant and animal life in time and space must be arranged in\na certain order. It must be possible to replace classification by a\ngenealogical tree. Every form must fall without difficulty into its\nproper place in that tree. If it is true that birds are descended\nfrom reptiles or men from apes, then there must be no birds before\nthe reptiles appear, and no men before apes. The geological record is\nmanifestly a mere fragmentary history, still for the most part unread,\nbut, however fragmentary it is, it must be consistent. One human skull\nin the coal measures blows the whole theory to atoms. The passage\nfrom form to form must be explicable by intermediate types capable of\nmaintaining themselves; there may be gaps in the record, but there must\nbe no miraculous leaps in the story. If an animal living in the air is\nto be considered as a lineal descendant of some animal living in the\nwater, then the structure of the former bit by bit and step by step\nmust be shown to be adapted, modified, changed about from that of the\nlatter; it must have ears for water-hearing modified for air-hearing,\nand its heart and breathing arrangements must be shown to be similarly\nchanged over, and so on for all its structure. All these requirements\nwill follow naturally from the necessities of a process of Natural\nSelection. They follow logically upon no other hypothesis. They are not\ndemanded, for example, by the idea of a Creator continually interfering\nwith and rectifying some stately, unaccountable process of \u201cEvolution,\u201d\nwhich seems to be Mr. Belloc\u2019s idea--so far as he ventures to display\nany idea of his own--in the matter. Such things as vestigial structures\nand a number of odd clumsinesses in living things--many still very\nimperfect adaptations to an erect position, for example--become\ngrotesque in relation to such a view. A Creator who put needless or\ninconvenient fish structures into the anatomy of a land animal and\nmade the whole fauna and flora of the land a patch-up of aquatic forms\nof life must be not so much a Divinity as a Pedant. But it is the\nburthen of the whole beautiful science of comparative anatomy that the\nstructure of animals and plants, and their succession in time, fall\nexactly into the conditions defined by the Theory of Natural Selection.\nIn the most lovely and intricate detail, in a vast multitude of\nexamples, in plants and in animals alike, this theme of the adaptation\nof pre-existing structure is worked out.\n\nWe should in accordance with the Theory of Natural Selection expect\nto find traces of the ancestral form, not only in the lay-out of the\nadult animal, but in every phase of its life history, and that, in\nfact, is just what we do find. There is no more fascinating branch of\ncomparative anatomy than embryology. Each life cycle we discuss tends\nto repeat the ancestral story, and only under the stress of necessity\ndoes it undergo modification at any point. There is little toleration\nin the life process for unnecessary divergencies. Economies are\neffected by short cuts and reductions, and special f\u0153tal structures are\ngranted reluctantly. So that even in man we find peeping through the\nadaptations imposed upon the human type by its viviparous necessities,\nand in spite of the advantage of every economy of force, memories,\nfor example, of the gill slits, of the fish heart and kidney, of the\nreptilian skull, of the mammalian tail. I mention this fact in the\n_Outline_, and upon it Mr. Belloc comments in a manner that leaves\none\u2019s doubts poised between his honesty and his intelligence. He\ndeclares, which is totally untrue, that I \u201crepeat the old Victorian\ntag\u201d--I doubt if there ever was such a tag--that the embryo \u201cclimbs up\nthe family tree.\u201d He puts these words in inverted commas as though I\nhave really adopted and used them, and for the life of me it is only by\nstraining my charity to the utmost that I can accept that this was an\naccident. Of course every text-book of embryology for the last forty\nyears has made it perfectly plain, as I have stated here, that the life\ncycle can be and is modified at any point, and that an embryo has much\nmore serious work in hand than reciting its family history. It betrays\nits ancestral origins to analysis; but that is an altogether different\nmatter. Mr. Belloc, however, is so densely ignorant himself upon these\nquestions that he can imagine, or think it worth while to pretend to\nimagine and attempt to persuade his readers by the expedient of these\ninverted commas, that I entertain such a view. And then follow this,\nwhich I quote that the reader may the better understand a certain\noccasional acerbity in my allusions to Mr. Belloc:--\n\n    \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know that Vailleton of Montpellier has knocked the\n    last nail into the coffin of that facile and superficial Victorian\n    shortcut (and blind alley). He has probably never heard of\n    Vailleton, and when he does he will suspect him for a foreigner.\n    That is what I mean by being provincial and not abreast of one\u2019s\n    time.\u201d\n\nIt is perfectly true that I have never heard of any Vailleton in\nbiological science. Nor has anyone else. There is \u201cno sich person.\u201d\nPerhaps Mr. Belloc has not been able to read the manuscript of some\nadviser, or his memory may have played a trick upon him. Possibly he\nhas in mind that eminent Victorian embryologist, Vialleton, who, so far\nfrom being the very newest thing in \u201cEuropean\u201d biology, must now be\ngetting on for seventy. He is half-way back to Haeckel, the originator\nof the family-tree idea, a German embryologist and not, as a matter\nof fact, the Victorian English Protestant Mr. Belloc supposes him to\nbe. Possibly years and years ago some French student may have run away\nwith the idea that embryos conscientiously repeat their phylogeny,\nand Professor Vialleton may have thought it well to discuss this idea\nin one of his books. It is not an idea I have ever entertained, much\nless stated, and its only interest here is that it gives Mr. Belloc a\nchance of showing how rudely he can set out his inaccuracies and his\nmisconceptions.\n\nBut this is an incidental comment. I will reserve for my next section\na consideration of the remarkable arguments--\u201ccrushing arguments\u201d the\nenthusiastic cross-heads of his editor declare them to be--that Mr.\nBelloc produces against this view of life as being in a state of change\nunder the action of Natural Selection, that I have put here before the\nreader.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nMR. BELLOC AS A SPECIMEN CRITIC OF NATURAL SELECTION\n\n\nThe chief arguments against the Theory of Natural Selection with which\nMr. Belloc has favoured us are neatly set out by him in two triads.\nHis passion for orderly arrangement is greater than his logic, and we\nshall find that the second and third arguments of his second triad\nare substantially the same. He is rather exceptionally ignorant of\nmodern scientific literature, and his arguments do not cover all the\ncountervailing considerations upon which systematic observation and\nresearch work have been based--the speculations of Dr. Fairfield Osborn\nwould have been a godsend for him--but the things he has to say are\nconveniently simple; they embody some prevalent misconceptions, and\nthey will be useful in accentuating the more salient points in my\naccount of the theory given in my second paper.\n\nHe produces first certain remarkable _a priori_ arguments--his \u201cthree\n_a prior_ arguments.\u201d The first is beautifully absurd. It is difficult\nto believe it is advanced in anything but a spirit of burlesque.\nHe says that an advantage is not an advantage. He says that an\nadvantage does not give an advantage unless it is combined with other\nadvantages. You will think I am misrepresenting him. Then please read\nthis:--\n\n    \u201c(1) The advantageous differences making for survival are not of\n    one kind in any particular case, but of an indefinitely large\n    number (_e.g._, climate getting colder needs not only warmer\n    coat, but power to digest new food, protective colouring so\n    as not to show dark against snow, etc., an indefinitely large\n    number of qualities). Now the chance of _all_ being combined\n    (and co-ordinated) in a single individual, _without design_,\n    _accidentally_, let alone of their thus appearing in many\n    individuals _accidentally and without design_, approximates to\n    zero.\u201d\n\nThis is, so to speak, the short uncompleted form of the first argument.\nIt is expanded later to a copiousness too great to admit of quotation.\nThis expansion carries the statement right to its conclusion, that\nonly an individual possessing all the possible differences that\nare advantageous at any particular time can survive. Otherwise its\ndifferences have no \u201csurvival value.\u201d They may be advantages, but\nnot sufficient advantages to score an advantage. I know this sounds\ntipsy, but there it is in black and white in Mr. Belloc\u2019s wonderful\nArticle V for any one to consult. It follows plainly that, except for a\nmiracle, every species must be exterminated in every generation. I can\nsee no other way out of it. No individual, he declares, can survive\nwithout the full set of advantageous differences, and the chance of any\nindividual having the full set of advantageous differences, he declares\nafter some abstruse verbal gestures, is zero. There is Mr. Belloc with\nhis unfailing logic, his clear mathematical demonstration, and all\nthe rest of it. There is the lucid Latin mind shining above my Nordic\nfog! Yet the previous generation got along without any of the set! And\nspecies do survive.\n\nDid Mr. Belloc imagine he was saying something else? It is not for me\nto speculate. Helping out an antagonist in a controversy is apt to be\nresented. He has, I think, simply got into a muddle here, and he is\nnot sufficiently self-critical to get out of it again. So he tries\nto muddle through. It is quite reasonable to say that when a species\nis under stress of changing conditions it is usual for the need for\nadaptation to be felt upon a number of points and not simply upon\none, and that, since every advantage counts, the individuals with the\ngreatest combination of advantageous differences have the best chances.\nBut that does not alter the fact that even a single advantage is an\nadvantage. What happens in nature is not an extermination of all who\nare not completely in the fashion of the new differences. That seems\nto be Mr. Belloc\u2019s idea, but it is a wrong idea. What does happen is\na diminution in each generation of the number of the disadvantaged\nin relation to the number of the advantaged. That is quite another\naffair. Mr. Belloc has not grasped this. His third _a priori_ argument\nshows as much even more plainly than his first, and to that I shall\npresently come.\n\n\nMR. BELLOC\u2019S MENTAL INDIGESTION\n\nI fancy this stuff he has written here is an outcome of an indigestion\nof Samuel Butler by Mr. Belloc. I should not have thought Mr. Belloc\nhad read Samuel Butler, and I doubt if he has read him much. But there\nis a decided echo of _Luck or Cunning_ in the one indistinct paragraph\nin which, without committing himself too deeply, Mr. Belloc seems to\nconvey his own attitude towards the procedure of Evolution. \u201cDesign,\u201d\nwhatever that is, is at work, and Natural Selection is not. \u201cThere\nis an innate power possessed by the living thing to attempt its own\nadaptation.\u201d It is quite a delusion apparently that rabbits that cannot\nrun or sparrows that are not quick on the wing are killed off more\nfrequently than the smarter fellows. That never happens, though to the\natheistically minded it may seem to happen. If it happens, it would\n\u201cget rid of a God.\u201d But there are rabbits which, unlike Mrs. Micawber,\ndo make an effort. You must understand that all creation, inspired by\ndesign, is striving. The good fungus says to itself, \u201cRedder and more\nspots will benefit me greatly,\u201d and tries and tries, and presently\nthere are redder hues and more spots. Or a happily inspired fish says:\n\u201cThere is a lot of food on land and the life is more genteel there, so\nlet me get lungs.\u201d And presently it gets lungs. Some day Mr. Belloc\nmust take a holiday in Sussex and flap about a bit and get himself some\nwings and demonstrate all this. But perhaps this is caricature, and\nMr. Belloc when he talks about that \u201cinnate disposition\u201d just means\nnothing very much--just an attempt or something. I will not pretend to\nunderstand Mr. Belloc fully upon this point.\n\n\nMR. BELLOC\u2019S BIRD-LIZARD\n\nI will return to the essential misconception of the Theory of Natural\nSelection betrayed in this first _a priori_ when I consider Mr.\nBelloc\u2019s third feat of logic. But first let me glance at his second. In\nthis he says, very correctly, that every stage in the evolution of a\nliving creature must be a type capable of maintaining itself and every\nchange must be an advantageous change. I have noted this very obvious\npoint already in my second paper. But then Mr. Belloc instructs us that\nthe chances of its being so are, for no earthly reason, zero--that\nfatal zero again!--and goes on to a passage so supremely characteristic\nthat it must be read to be believed:--\n\n    \u201cA bird has wings with which it can escape its enemies. If it began\n    as a reptile without wings--when, presumably, it had armour or some\n    other aid to survival--what of the interval? Natural Selection\n    sets out to change a reptile\u2019s leg into a bird\u2019s wing and the\n    scales of its armour into feathers. It does so by making the leg\n    less and less of a leg for countless ages, and by infinite minute\n    gradations, gradually turning the scales into feathers.\n\n    \u201cBy the very nature of the theory _each stage_ in all these\n    millions is an advantage over the last towards survival! The thing\n    has only to be stated for its absurdity to appear. Compare the \u2018get\n    away\u2019 chances of a lizard at one end of the process or a sparrow at\n    the other with some poor beast that had to try and scurry off on\n    half-wings! or to fly with half-legs!\n\n    \u201cPostulate a design, say, \u2018Here was something in the making,\u2019 and\n    the process is explicable, especially if fairly rapid so as to\n    bridge over the dangerously weak stage of imperfection. Postulate\n    Natural Selection and it is manifestly impossible.\u201d\n\nLet us note a few things of which Mr. Belloc shows himself to be\nunaware in this amusing display of perplexity. In the first place he\ndoes not know that the Mesozoic reptiles most closely resembling birds\nwere creatures walking on their hind-legs, with a bony structure of the\nloins and a backbone already suggestive of the avian anatomy. Nor is\nhe aware that in the lowliest of living birds the fore-limbs are mere\nflappers, that the feathers are simpler in structure than any other\nbird\u2019s feathers, and that the general development of a bird\u2019s feather\npoints plainly to the elongation of a scale. He has never learnt that\nfeathers came before wings, and that at first they had to do, not with\nflying, but with protection against cold. Yet all this was under his\nnose in the _Outline of History_ in text and picture. The transition\nfrom a quilled to a feathered dinosaur presents indeed no imaginative\ndifficulties, and the earliest birds ran and did not fly. One of the\nearliest known extinct birds is _Hesperornis_, a wingless diving bird.\nIt is figured on page 30, and there is another bird on page 34 that Mr.\nBelloc might ponder with advantage. A whole great section of living\nbirds, like the ostrich and the emu, have no trace in their structure\nof any ancestral flying phase; their breast-bones are incapable of\ncarrying the necessary muscular attachments.\n\n[Illustration: H.\u00a0G. Wells.\n\nLow]\n\nBut after the feather was fully developed it opened up great\npossibilities of a strong and light extension of the flapper, helpful\nin running or useful in leaps from tree to tree. _Arch\u00e6opteryx_,\nanother early bird, which is also figured in the _Outline_, has a sort\nof bat-wing fore-limb with feathers instead of membrane. It was a\nwoodland creature, and flew as a flying fox or a flying lemur or even\na bat flies. All these facts are widely known, and all that trouble\nabout the half-leg, half-wing, dissolves before them. But consider\nwhat a hash they make of Mr. Belloc\u2019s argument, and how pitifully it\nscurries off before them on its nondescript stumps of pretentious\nhalf-knowledge, half-impudence! So much for zero the second.\n\n\nTROUBLES OF MR. BELLOC AS A MATRIMONIAL AGENT\n\nThe final of this wonderful trinity of _a prioris_ is a repetition of\nan argument advanced ages ago by Queen Victoria\u2019s Lord Salisbury, when\nhe was President of the British Association. Even then it struck people\nthat he had been poorly coached for the occasion. Assuming that one or\ntwo individuals have got all these \u201csurvival value\u201d differences in the\ncorrect proportions--against which the chances are zero--how by any\ntheory of Natural Selection are we to suppose they will meet, breed,\nand perpetuate them? So this argument runs. The chances are again\ndeclared to be zero, the third zero, and Mr. Belloc, I gather, calls\nin Design again here and makes his Creative Spirit, which has already\nurged these two individuals, lions, or liver flukes or fleas or what\nnot, to make an effort and adapt themselves, lead them now to their\nromantic and beneficial nuptials, while the Theory of Natural Selection\ngrinds its teeth in the background and mutters \u201cFoiled again.\u201d\n\nBut this third argument reinforces the first, in showing what is the\nmatter with Mr. Belloc\u2019s ideas in this group of questions. He has got\nthe whole business upside down. I rather blame the early Darwinians in\nthis matter for using so inaccurate a phrase as the \u201cSurvival of the\nFittest.\u201d It is to that phrase that most of Mr. Belloc\u2019s blunderings\nare due. Yet he ought not to have been misled. He had a summary of\nmodern views before him. He criticises my _Outline of History_, he\nabuses it, and yet he has an extraordinary trick of getting out of its\nway whenever it swings near his brain-case. I warn the readers of that\nmodest compendium expressly (and as early as page 16) that the juster\nphrase to use is not the Survival of the Fittest, but the Survival of\nthe Fitter. I do what I can throughout to make them see this question\nnot in terms of an individual, but in terms of the species.\n\nYet Mr. Belloc insists upon writing of \u201cthe Fittest\u201d as a sort of\nconspicuously competitive prize boy, a favourable \u201csport,\u201d who has to\nmeet his female equivalent and breed a new variety. That is all the\nworld away from the manner in which a biologist thinks of the process\nof specific life. He sees a species as a vast multitude of individuals\nin which those without individual advantages tend to fail and those\nwith them tend to be left to continue the race. The most important fact\nis the general relative failure of the disadvantaged. The fact next in\norder of importance is the general relative survival of the advantaged.\nThe most important consequence is that the average of the species\nmoves in the direction of advantageous differences, moving faster or\nslower according to its rate of reproduction and the urgency of its\ncircumstances--that is to say, to the severity of its death-rate. Any\none particular individual may have any sort of luck; that does not\naffect the general result.\n\nI do not know what Mr. Belloc\u2019s mathematical attainments are, or indeed\nwhether he has ever learnt to count beyond zero. There is no evidence\non that matter to go upon in these papers. But one may suppose him\nable to understand what an average is, and he must face up to the fact\nthat the characteristics of a species are determined by its average\nspecimens. This dickering about with fancy stories of abnormal nuptials\nhas nothing to do with the Theory of Natural Selection. We are dealing\nhere with large processes and great numbers, secular changes and\nrealities broadly viewed.\n\nI must apologise for pressing these points home. But I think it is\nworth while to take this opportunity of clearing up a system of foggy\nmisconceptions about the Theory itself that may not be confined\naltogether to Mr. Belloc.\n\n\nMR. BELLOC COMES TO HIS EVIDENCE\n\nAnd now let us come to Mr. Belloc\u2019s second triad of arguments--his\narguments, as he calls them, \u201cfrom Evidence.\u201d The sole witness on\nEvidence called is his own sturdy self. He calls himself into the box,\nand I will admit he gives his testimony in a bluff, straightforward\nmanner--a good witness. He says very properly that the theory of\nNatural Selection repudiates any absolute fixity of species. But we\nhave to remember that the rate of change in any species is dependent\nupon the balance between that species and its conditions, and if this\nremains fairly stable the species may remain for as long without\nremarkable developments, or indulge in variations not conditioned\nby external necessities. The classical _Lingula_ of the geological\ntext-books, a warm-water shell-fish, has remained much the same\ncreature throughout the entire record, for hundreds of millions of\nyears it may be. It was suited to its submarine life, and hardly any\nvariation was possible that was not a disadvantage. It swayed about\nwithin narrow limits.\n\nThis admission of a practical stability annoys Mr. Belloc; it seems\nto be a mean trick on the part of the Theory of Natural Selection. He\nrather spoils his case by saying that \u201caccording to Natural Selection\u201d\nthe swallow ought to go on flying \u201cfaster and faster with the process\nof time.\u201d Until it bursts into flames like a meteor and vanishes from\nour world? And the _Lingula_ ought to become more and more quiescent\nuntil it becomes a pebble? Yet plainly there is nothing in the Theory\nof Natural Selection to make the swallow fly any faster than its needs\nrequire. Excess of swiftness in a swallow may be as disadvantageous as\njumping to conclusions can be to a controversialist.\n\nBut here is a statement that is spirited and yet tolerably fair:--\n\n    \u201cIf Natural Selection be true, then what we call a Pig is but a\n    fleeting vision; all the past he has been becoming a Pig, and all\n    the future he will spend evolving out of Pigdom, and Pig is but a\n    moment\u2019s phase in the eternal flux.\u201d\n\nThis overlooks the melancholy possibility of an extinction of Pigs, but\nit may be accepted on the whole as true. And against this Mr. Belloc\ngives us his word, for that upon examination is what his \u201cEvidence\u201d\namounts to--that Types are Fixed. He jerks in capitals here in a rather\nconvincing way. It is restrained of him, considering how great a part\ntypography plays in his rhetoric, that he has not put it up in block\ncapitals or had the paper perforated with the words: Fixed Types.\n\n    \u201cWe have the evidence of our senses that we are surrounded by fixed\n    types.\u201d\n\nFor weeks and months it would seem Mr. Belloc has walked about Sussex\naccumulating first-hand material for these disputations, and all this\ntime the Pigs have remained Pigs. When he prodded them they squealed.\nThey remained pedestrian in spite of his investigatory pursuit. Not one\ndid he find \u201cscuttling away\u201d with a fore-limb, \u201chalf-leg, half-wing.\u201d\nHe has the evidence of his senses also, I may remind him, that the\nworld is flat. And yet when we take a longer view we find the world is\nround, and Pigs are changing, and _Sus Scrofa_ is not the beast it was\ntwo thousand years ago.\n\nMr. Belloc is conscious of historical training, and I would suggest\nto him that it might be an improving exercise to study the Pig\nthroughout history and to compare the Pigs of the past with the Pigs\nof a contemporary agricultural show. He might inform himself upon the\nbulk, longevity, appetites, kindliness, and general disposition of\nthe Pig to-day. He might realise then that the Pig to-day, viewed not\nas the conservative occupant of a Sussex sty, but as a species, was\nsomething just a little different as a whole, but different, definably\ndifferent, from the Pig of two thousand or five thousand years ago. He\nmight retort that the Pig has been the victim of selective breeding\nand is not therefore a good instance of Natural Selection, but it was\nhe who brought Pigs into this discussion. Dogs again have been greatly\nmoulded by man in a relatively short time, and, again, horses. Almost\nall species of animals and plants that have come into contact with\nman in the last few thousand years have been greatly modified by his\nexertions, and we have no records of any detailed observations of\nstructure or habits of creatures outside man\u2019s range of interest before\nthe last three or four centuries. Even man himself, though he changes\nwith relative slowness because of the slowness with which he comes to\nsexual maturity, has changed very perceptibly in the last five thousand\nyears.\n\n\nMR. BELLOC A FIXED TYPE\n\nMr. Belloc says he has not (\u201cArgument from Evidence\u201d). He says it\nvery emphatically (\u201cCrushing Argument from Evidence\u201d--to adopt the\nphraseology of his cross-heads). Let me refer him to a recent lecture\nby Sir Arthur Keith (Royal Society of Medicine, Nov. 16, 1925) for a\nfirst gleam of enlightenment. He will realise a certain rashness in his\nstatement. I will not fill these pages with an attempt to cover all\nthe changes in the average man that have gone on in the last two or\nthree thousand years. For example, in the face and skull, types with\nan edge-to-edge bite of the teeth are giving place to those with an\noverlapping bite; the palate is undergoing contraction, the physiognomy\nchanges. And so on throughout all man\u2019s structure. No doubt one can\nfind plentiful instances to-day of people almost exactly like the\npeople of five thousand years ago in their general physique. But that\nis not the point. The proportions and so forth that were exceptional\nthen are becoming prevalent now; the proportions that were prevalent\nthen, now become rare. The average type is changing. Considering that\nman only gets through about four generations in a century, it is a\nvery impressive endorsement of the theory of Natural Selection that he\nhas undergone these palpable modifications in the course of a brief\nscore of centuries. Mr. Belloc\u2019s delusion that no such modification has\noccurred may be due to his presumption that any modification would have\nto show equally in each and every individual. I think it is. He seems\nquite capable of presuming that.\n\n\nTRIUMPHANT DEMAND OF MR. BELLOC\n\nMr. Belloc\u2019s next Argument from Evidence is a demand from the geologist\nfor a continuous \u201cseries of changing forms passing one into the other.\u201d\nHe does not want merely \u201cintermediate forms,\u201d he says; he wants the\nwhole series--grandfather, father, and son. He does not say whether\nhe insists upon a pedigree with the bones and proper certificates of\nbirth, but I suppose it comes to that. This argument, I am afraid,\nwins, hands down. Mr. Belloc may score the point. The reprehensible\nnegligence displayed by the lower animals in the burial of their dead,\nor even the proper dating of their own remains, leaves the apologist\nfor the Theory of Natural Selection helpless before this simple\nrequisition. It is true that we now have, in the case of the camels,\nthe horses, and the elephants, an extraordinary display of fossil\ntypes, exhibiting step by step the development and differentiation of\nspecies and genera. But this, I take it, rather concerns his Third than\nhis Second Argument from Evidence.\n\n\nA MAGNIFICENT GENERALISATION\n\nThe third argument is essentially a display of Mr. Belloc\u2019s inability\nto understand the nature of the record of the rocks. I will assume\nthat he knows what \u201cstrata\u201d are, but it is clear that he does not\nunderstand that any uniform stratum indicates the maintenance of\nuniform conditions while it was deposited and an absence of selective\nstresses, and that when it gives place to another different stratum,\nthat signifies a change in conditions, not only in the conditions of\nthe place where the stratum is found, but in the supply of material. An\nestuary sinks and gives place to marine sands, or fresh water brings\ndown river gravels which cover over an accumulation of shingle. Now if\nhe will think what would happen to-day under such circumstances, he\nwill realise that the fauna and flora of the stratum first considered\nwill drift away and that another fauna and flora will come in with\nthe new conditions. Fresh things will come to feed and wade and drown\nin the waters, and old types will no longer frequent them. The fossil\nremains of one stratum are very rarely directly successive to those\nbelow it or directly ancestral to those above it. A succession of\nforms is much more difficult and elusive to follow up, therefore,\nthan Mr. Belloc imagines. And then if he will consider what happens to\nthe rabbits and rats and mice on his Sussex estate, and how they die\nand what happens to their bodies, he may begin to realise just what\nproportion of the remains of these creatures is ever likely to find its\nway to fossilisation. Perhaps years pass without the bones of a single\nrabbit from the whole of England finding their way to a resting-place\nwhere they may become fossil. Nevertheless the rabbit is a very common\nanimal. And then if Mr. Belloc will think of pal\u00e6ontologists, millions\nof years after this time, working at the strata that we are forming\nto-day, working at a gravel or sand-pit here or a chance exposure\nthere, and prevented from any general excavation, and if he will ask\nhimself what proportion of the rare few rabbits actually fossilised are\nlikely to come to light, I think he will begin to realise for the first\ntime in his life the tremendous \u201cgappiness\u201d of the geological record\nand how very childish and absurd is his demand for an unbroken series\nof forms. The geological record is not like an array of hundreds of\nvolumes containing a complete history of the past. It is much more like\na few score crumpled pages from such an array, the rest of the volumes\nhaving either never been printed, or having been destroyed or being\ninaccessible.\n\nIn his Third Argument from Evidence Mr. Belloc obliges us with a\nsummary of this record of the rocks, about which he knows so little.\nI need scarcely note here that the only evidence adduced is his own\ninspired conviction. No \u201cEuropean\u201d pal\u00e6ontologist or biologist is\nbrought out of the Humbert safe and quoted. Here was a chance to puzzle\nme dreadfully with something \u201cin French,\u201d and it is scandalously thrown\naway. Mr. Belloc tells us, just out of his head, that instead of there\nbeing that succession of forms in the geological record the Theory\nof Natural Selection requires, there are \u201cenormously long periods of\nstable type\u201d and \u201c(presumably) rapid periods of transition.\u201d That\n\u201cpresumably\u201d is splendid; scientific caution and all the rest of\nit--rapid periods when I suppose the Creative Spirit got busy and types\nwoke up and said, \u201cTurn over; let\u2019s change a bit.\u201d\n\nThere is really nothing to be said about this magnificent\ngeneralisation except that it is pure Bellocking. Wherever there is a\ngroup of strata, sufficiently thick and sufficiently alike to witness\nto a long-sustained period of slight alterations in conditions, there\nwe find the successive species approximating. This is not a statement \u00e0\nla Belloc. In spite of the chances against such a thing occurring, and\nin defiance of Mr. Belloc\u2019s assertion that it does not occur, there are\nseveral series of forms in time, giving a practically direct succession\nof species. Mr. Belloc may read about it and at the same time exercise\nthis abnormal linguistic gift which sits upon him so gracefully, his\nknowledge of the French language, in Deperet\u2019s _Transformations du\nMonde Animal_, where all these questions are conveniently summarised.\nThere he will get the results of Waagen with a succession of Ammonites\nand also of Neumayr with _Paludina_, and there also he will get\ninformation about the sequence of the species of _Mastodon_ throughout\nthe Tertiary age and read about the orderly progress of a pig group,\nthe _Brachyodus_ of the Eocene and Oligocene. There is a touch of irony\nin the fact that his own special prot\u00e9g\u00e9, the Pig, should thus turn\nupon him and rend his Third Argument from Evidence.\n\nMore recondite for Mr. Belloc is the work of Hilgendorf upon\n_Planorbis_, because it is in German; but the drift of it is visible\nin the Pal\u00e6ontology wing of the London Natural History Museum, Room\nVIII. A species of these gasteropods was, during the slow processes of\nsecular change, caught in a big lake, fed by hot springs. It underwent\nprogressive modification into a series of successive new species as\nconditions changed through the ages. Dr. Kl\u00e4hms\u2019 specimens show this\nbeautifully. Rowe\u2019s account of the evolutionary series in the genus\n_Micraster_ (_Q.J.M.S._, 1899) is also accessible to Mr. Belloc, and\nhe will find other matter to ponder in Goodrich\u2019s _Living Organisms_,\n1924. The finest series of all, longer in range and completer in its\nlinks, is that of the Horse. There is an excellent little pamphlet by\nMatthew and Chubb, well illustrated, _The Evolution of the Horse_,\npublished by the American Museum of Natural History, New York, so\nplain, so simple, so entirely and humiliatingly destructive of Mr.\nBelloc\u2019s nonsensical assertions, that I pray him to get it and read it\nfor the good of his really very unkempt and neglected soul.\n\nThus we observe that Mr. Belloc does not know the facts in this case\nof Natural Selection, and that he argues very badly from such facts as\nhe misconceives. It is for the reader to decide which at the end is\nmore suitable as a laughing-stock--the Theory of Natural Selection or\nMr. Belloc. And having thus studied this great Catholic apologist as\nan amateur biologist and arrived at the result, we will next go on to\nconsider what he has to say about the origins of mankind--and Original\nSin.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nMR. BELLOC\u2019S ADVENTURES AMONG THE SUB-MEN: MANIFEST TERROR OF THE\nNEANDERTHALER\n\n\nFrom Mr. Belloc\u2019s feats with Natural Selection we come to his\nadventures among his ancestors and the fall of man. These are, if\npossible, even more valiant than his beautiful exposure of the\n\u201chalf-educated assurance\u201d of current biological knowledge. He rushes\nabout the arena, darting from point to point, talking of my ignorance\nof the \u201cmain recent European work in Anthropology,\u201d and avoiding\nsomething with extraordinary skill and dexterity. What it is he is\navoiding I will presently explain. No one who has read my previous\narticles need be told that not a single name, not a single paper, is\ncited from that galaxy of \u201cmain recent European\u201d anthropology. With\none small exception. There is a well-known savant, M. Marcellin Boule,\nwho wrote of the Grottes de Grimaldi in 1906. Some facetious person\nseems to have written to Mr. Belloc and told him that M. Boule in 1906\n\u201cdefinitely proved the exact opposite\u201d of the conclusions given by Mr.\nWright in his _Quaternary Ice Age_ (1914), and quoted in my _Outline_.\nMr. Belloc writes this down, elevates M. Boule to the magnificence of\n\u201cBoule\u201d simply and follows up with the habitual insults. By counting\nfrom his one fixed mathematical point, _zero_ in some dimension unknown\nto me, he concludes that I must be twenty years out of date, though the\ndifference between 1906 and 1914, by ordinary ways of reckoning, is\nreally not minus twenty but plus eight.\n\nThe same ungracious humorist seems to have stuffed up Mr. Belloc\nwith a story that for the last twenty years the climate of the\nearth has ceased to vary with the eccentricity of the earth\u2019s\norbit, and that any natural consequences of the precession of the\nequinoxes no longer occur; that climate has, in fact, cut loose from\nastronomical considerations, and that you can find out all about it\nin the _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_. You cannot. Mr. Belloc should have\ntried. Some day he must find time to puzzle out M. Boule\u2019s curve of\noscillation of the Mediterranean and correlate it with Penck\u2019s, and go\ninto the mystery of certain Moustierian implements that M. Boule says\nare not Moustierian; and after that he had better read over the little\ndiscussion about changes of climate in the _Outline of History_--it is\nreally quite simply put--and see what it is I really said and what his\nleg-pulling friend has been up to with him in that matter. It may be\nkinder to Mr. Belloc to help him with a hint. Croll made an excellent\nbook in which he pointed out a number of astronomical processes which\nmust produce changes of climate. He suggested that these processes\nwere sufficient to account for the fluctuations of the glacial age.\nThey are not. But they remain perfectly valid causes of climatic\nvariation. Croll is no more done for than Darwin is done for. That is\nwhere Mr. Belloc\u2019s friend let Mr. Belloc down.\n\nBut Mr. Belloc does not always work on the information of facetious\nfriends, and sometimes one is clearly in the presence of the unassisted\nexpert controversialist. When, for example, I say that the Tasmanians\nare not racially Neanderthalers, but that they are Neanderthaloid,\nhe can bring himself to alter the former word also to Neanderthaloid\nin order to allege an inconsistency. And confident that most of his\nCatholic readers will not check him back by my book, he can ascribe to\nme views about race for which there is no shadow of justification. But\nit is disagreeable to me to follow up such issues, they concern Mr.\nBelloc much more than they do the living questions under discussion,\nand I will not even catalogue what other such instances of unashamed\ncontroversy occur.\n\n\nMR. BELLOC AS ICONOCLAST\n\nIn the course of the darting to and fro amongst human and sub-human\npre-history, Mr. Belloc criticises me severely for quoting Sir Arthur\nKeith\u2019s opinion upon the Piltdown remains. I have followed English\nauthorities. All these remains are in England, and so they have been\nstudied at first hand mostly by English people. No one can regret this\ninsularity on the part of _Eoanthropus_ more than I do, but it leaves\nMr. Belloc\u2019s \u201cEuropean opinion on the whole\u201d rejecting Sir Arthur\nKeith as a rather more than usually absurd instance of Mr. Belloc\u2019s\ndistinctive method. \u201c_What_ European opinion?\u201d you ask. Mr. Belloc does\nnot say. Probably Belloking of Upsala and Bellokopoulos of Athens.\nMr. Belloc--forgetting that in an earlier edition of the _Outline_ I\ngive a full summary of the evidence in this case, up-to-date--informs\nhis Catholic audience that I have apparently read nothing about the\nPiltdown vestige but an \u201cEnglish work.\u201d And then he proceeds to fall\nfoul of the \u201crestoration\u201d of _Eoanthropus_. It is an imaginary picture\nof the creature, and I myself think that the artist has erred on the\nhuman side. Mr. Belloc objects to all such restorations.\n\nWell, we have at least a saucerful of skull fragments and a doubtful\njawbone to go upon, and the picture does not pretend to be, and\nno reader can possibly suppose it to be, anything but a tentative\nrestoration. But why a great Catholic apologist of all people, the\nchampion of a Church which has plastered the world with portraits\nof the Virgin Mary, of the Holy Family, and with pictures of saints\nand miracles in the utmost profusion, without any warning to the\nsimple-minded that these gracious and moving figures to which they\ngive their hearts may be totally unlike the beings they profess to\nrepresent--why he should turn iconoclast and object to these modestly\npropounded restorations passes my comprehension. At Cava di Tirrene\nnear Naples I have been privileged to see, in all reverence, a hair\nof the Virgin, small particles of St. Peter, and other evidences of\nChristianity; and they did not seem to me to be so considerable in\namount as even the _Eoanthropus_ fragments. And again, in this strange\noutbreak of iconoclastic rage, he says:--\n\n    \u201cAgain, we have the coloured picture of a dance of American Red\n    Indians round a fire solemnly presented as a \u2018reconstruction\u2019 of\n    Pal\u00e6olithic society.\u201d\n\nHe has not even observed that the chief figures in that picture are\ncopied directly from the actual rock paintings of Pal\u00e6olithic men\nalthough this is plainly stated.\n\n\nMR. BELLOC DISCOVERS A MARE\u2019S-NEST\n\nAnd yet he must have looked at the reproductions of these rock\npaintings given in the _Outline_. Because in his ninth paper he comes\nout with the most wonderful of all the mare\u2019s-nests he has discovered\nin the _Outline of History_, and it concerns these very pictures. You\nsee there is an account of the Reindeer men who lived in France and\nNorth Spain, and it is said of them that it is doubtful if they used\nthe bow. Mr. Belloc declares that it is my bitter hatred of religion\nthat makes me say this, but indeed it is not. It is still doubtful if\nthe Reindeer hunters had the bow. The fires of Smithfield would not\ntempt me to say certainly either that they had it or that they did not\nhave it, until I know. But they seem to have killed the reindeer and\nthe horse and bison by spearing them. Mr. Belloc may have evidence\nunknown to the rest of mankind in that Humbert safe of his, otherwise\nthat is the present state of our knowledge. But, as I explain on pages\n56 and 57 in language that a child might understand, simultaneously\nwith that reindeer-hunting life in the north there were more advanced\n(I know the word will disgust Mr. Belloc with its horrid suggestion of\nprogress, but I have to use it) Pal\u00e6olithic people scattered over the\ngreater part of Spain and reaching into the South of France who had the\nbow. It says so in the text: \u201cMen carry bows\u201d runs my text, describing\ncertain rock pictures reproduced in my book. I wrote it in the text;\nand in the legends that are under these pictures, legends read and\napproved by me, the statement is repeated. The matter is as plain as\ndaylight and as plainly stated. Mr. Belloc will get if he says over to\nhimself slowly: \u201cReindeer men, bows doubtful; Azilian, Capsian men to\nthe south, bows certainly.\u201d And now consider Mr. Belloc, weaving his\nmare\u2019s-nest:--\n\n    \u201cUpon page 55 he writes, concerning the Pal\u00e6olithic man of the cave\n    drawings, this sentence: \u2018_it is doubtful if they knew of the bow_.\u2019\n\n    \u201cWhen I first read that sentence, I was so staggered, I could\n    hardly believe I had read it right.\n\n    \u201cThat a person pretending to teach popular prehistorical science in\n    1925 should tell us of the cave painters that it was \u2018_doubtful if\n    they knew of the bow_\u2019 seemed to me quite out of nature.\n\n    \u201cIt was the more extraordinary because here before me, in Mr.\n    Wells\u2019s own book, were reproductions of these cave paintings, with\n    the bow and the arrow appearing all over them! Even if he did not\n    take the trouble to look at the pictures that were to illustrate\n    his book, and left that department (as he probably did) to hack\n    work, he ought, as an ordinary educated man, to have known the\n    ultimate facts of the case.\n\n    \u201cPal\u00e6olithic man was an archer, and an archer with an efficient\n    weapon.\n\n    \u201cThe thing is a commonplace; only gross ignorance can have\n    overlooked it; but, as I have said, there is a cause behind that\n    ignorance. Mr. Wells would not have made this enormous error if he\n    had not been possessed with the necessity of making facts fit in\n    with his theology.\u201d\n\n\nTHE CHASING OF MR. BELLOC BEGINS\n\nThere is a real splendour in these three almost consecutive passages.\nAnd note incidentally how this facile controversialist bespatters\nalso my helpers and assistants. They do \u201chack work.\u201d Pal\u00e6olithic man,\nspeaking generally, was _not_ an archer. Only the later Pal\u00e6olithic\nmen, dealing with a smaller quarry than the reindeer, seem to have\nused the bow. Manifestly it is not I who am fitting my facts with\nmy theology here, but Mr. Belloc. He is inventing an error which is\nincredible even to himself as he invents it, and he is filling up space\nas hard as he can with indignation at my imaginary offence.\n\nWhy is he going on like this? In the interests of that Catholic soul\nin danger? Possibly. But his pen is running so fast here, it seems to\nme, not so much to get to something as to get away from something. The\nCatholic soul most in danger in these papers of Mr. Belloc\u2019s is Mr.\nBelloc\u2019s, and the thing he is running away from through these six long\ndisputations is a grisly beast, neither ape nor true man, called the\nNeanderthaler, _Homo Neanderthalensis_. This _Homo Neanderthalensis_\nis the real \u201cpal\u00e6olithic\u201d man. For three-quarters of the \u201cpal\u00e6olithic\u201d\nage he was the only sort of man. The Reindeer men, the Capsian men, are\n\u201cmodern\u201d beside him. He was no more an archer than he was an electrical\nengineer. He was no more an artist than Mr. Belloc is a man of science.\n\nInstead of bothering with any more of the poor little bits of\nargey-bargey about this or that detail in my account of the earlier\ntrue men that Mr. Belloc sees fit to make--instead of discussing\nwhether these first human savages, who drew and painted like Bushmen\nand hunted like Labrador Indians, did or did not progress in the arts\nof life before they passed out of history, let me note now the far more\nimportant matters that he refuses to look at.\n\nMr. Belloc makes a vast pother about _Eoanthropus_, which is no more\nthan a few bits of bone; he says nothing of the other creature to\nwhom I have devoted a whole chapter: the man that was not a man. Loud\nheadlines, challenging section headings, appeal in vain to Mr. Belloc\u2019s\naverted mind. Of this Neanderthal man we have plentiful evidence,\nand the collection increases every year. Always in sufficiently old\ndeposits, and always with consistent characteristics. Here is a\ncreature which not only made implements but fires, which gathered\ntogether ornamental stones, which buried its dead. Mr. Belloc says\nburying the dead is a proof of a belief in immortality. And this\ncreature had strange teeth, differing widely from the human, more\nelaborate and less bestial; it had a differently hung head; it was\nchinless, it had a non-opposable thumb. Says M. Boule, the one\nanthropologist known to Mr. Belloc: \u201cIn its absence of forehead the\nNeanderthal type strikingly resembles the anthropoid apes.\u201d And he adds\nthat it \u201cmust have possessed only a rudimentary psychic nature ...\nmarkedly inferior to that of any modern race.\u201d When I heard that Mr.\nBelloc was going to explain and answer the _Outline of History_, my\nthought went at once to this creature. What would Mr. Belloc say of it?\nWould he put it before or after the Fall? Would he correct its anatomy\nby wonderful new science out of his safe? Would he treat it like a\nbrother and say it held by the most exalted monotheism, or treat it as\na monster made to mislead wicked men?\n\nHe says nothing! He just walks away whenever it comes near him.\n\nBut I am sure it does not leave him. In the night, if not by day,\nit must be asking him: \u201cHave I a soul to save, Mr. Belloc? Is that\nHeidelberg jawbone one of us, Mr. Belloc, or not? You\u2019ve forgotten me,\nMr. Belloc. For four-fifths of the Pal\u00e6olithic age I was \u2018man.\u2019 There\nwas no other. I shamble and I cannot walk erect and look up at heaven\nas you do, Mr. Belloc, but dare you cast me to the dogs?\u201d\n\nNo reply.\n\nThe poor Neanderthaler has to go to the dogs, I fear, by implication,\nfor Mr. Belloc puts it with all the convincing force of italics,\nthat \u201c_Man is a fixed type._\u201d We realise now why he wrote the four\nwonderful chapters about Natural Selection that we have done our best\nto appreciate. It was to seem to establish this idea of _fixed types_.\nMan had to be shown as a \u201cFixed Type\u201d for reasons that will soon be\napparent. Apart from Mr. Belloc\u2019s assertion, there is no evidence that\nman is any exception to the rest of living creatures. He changes. They\nall change. All this remarkable discourse about bows or no bows and\nabout the high thinking and simple living of these wandering savages\nof twenty or more thousand years ago, which runs through half a dozen\npapers, seems to be an attempt to believe that these early men were\ncreatures exactly like ourselves; and an attempt to believe that the\nmore animal savages of the preceding hundred thousand years did not for\nall practical purposes exist at all. An attempt to believe and induce\nbelief; not an attempt to demonstrate. Mr. Belloc emerges where he went\nin, with much said and nothing proved, and the _Outline_ undamaged\nby his attack. And emerging he makes a confession that he never was\nreally concerned with the facts of the case at all. \u201cSympathy or\nantagonism with the Catholic faith is the only thing of real importance\nin attempting to teach history\u201d--and there you are! All these\nargumentative gesticulations, all these tortured attempts to confute,\nare acts of devotion to Mr. Belloc\u2019s peculiar vision of the Catholic\nfaith.\n\nI am afraid it is useless for me to suggest a pilgrimage to Mr.\nBelloc, or I would ask him to visit a popular resort not two hours\nby automobile from the little corner of France in which I am wont to\nshelter my suburban Protestantism from the too bracing English winter.\nThat is the caves at Rochers Rouges, at which, as it happens, his one\nquoted authority, M. Boule, worked for several years. There in an\natmosphere entirely \u201cLatin\u201d and \u201ccontinental,\u201d under the guidance of\nSignor Alfredo Lorenzi, he can see for himself his Fixed Type Man at\nsuccessive levels of change. No northern man need be with him when\nhe faces the facts of these caves; no Protestant shadow need dog his\nsteps; his French, that rare distinguished gift, will be understood,\nand he may even air such Proven\u00e7al or Italian as he is master of.\nThe horrid Neanderthaler is not in evidence. But there, protected\nby glass covers, he will be able to see the skeletons of Cro-Magnon\nman and Grimaldi man lying in the very positions in which they were\ndiscovered. He will see for himself the differences of level at\nwhich they were found and have some help in imagining the ages that\nseparate the successive types. He will note massiveness of skull and\nprotrusion of jaw. He will see the stone implements they used, the\nashes of their fires, and have some material for imagining the quality\nof their savagery. He can hunt about for arrow-heads to bear out his\nvaliant assertion that Pal\u00e6olithic man was \u201can archer with an efficient\nweapon.\u201d He will hunt until stooping and the sunshine make him giddy,\nin vain. And then, with these bones fresh in his mind, he should go to\nthe Museum at Monaco and see the skeleton of a modern human being. He\nwill find no end of loud talk and valiant singing and good red wine\nnecessary before he can get back to his faith in man as a _Fixed Type_.\n\n\nWHERE WAS THE GARDEN OF EDEN?\n\nIt is extremely difficult to find out what Mr. Belloc, as a\nrepresentative Catholic, believes about human origins. I was extremely\ncurious to get the Catholic view of these matters, and I heard of the\nadvent of these articles with very great pleasure, because I thought\nI should at last be able to grasp what I had hitherto failed to\nunderstand in the Catholic position. But if Mr. Belloc has said all\nthat there is to say for Catholicism upon these points, Catholicism is\nbankrupt. He assures me that to believe in the Biblical account of the\nCreation is a stupid Protestant tendency, and that Catholics do not\ndo anything of the sort. His attitude towards the Bible throughout is\none almost of contempt. It is not for me to decide between Christians\nupon this delicate issue. And Catholics, I gather, have always believed\nin Evolution and are far above the intellectual level of the American\nFundamentalist. It is very important to Catholic self-respect to keep\nthat last point in mind. Catholic evolution is a queer process into\nwhich \u201cDesign\u201d makes occasional convulsive raids; between which raids\nspecies remain \u201cfixed\u201d; but still it is a sort of Evolution. My peasant\nneighbours in Provence, devout Catholics and very charming people, have\nnot the slightest suspicion that they are Evolutionists, though Mr.\nBelloc assures me they are.\n\nBut, in spite of this smart Evolutionary town wear of the Church, it\nhas somehow to be believed by Catholics that \u201cman\u201d is and always has\nbeen and will be the same creature, \u201cfixed.\u201d That much Mr. Belloc gives\nus reiteratively. A contemporary writer, the Rev. Morris Morris, has\nwritten an interesting book, _Man Created During Descent_, to show that\nman\u2019s immortal soul was injected into the universe at the beginning of\nthe Neolithic period, which makes those Azilians and Capsians, with\ntheir bows and carvings, mere animals. The new Belloc-Catholic teaching\nis similar, but it puts the human beginnings earlier. Somewhen after\nthe Chellean and Moustierian periods, and before the Reindeer men, I\ngather that \u201cman\u201d appeared, according to Catholic doctrines, exactly\nwhat he is now. Or rather better. He was clad in skins and feathers,\nsmeared with paint, a cave-hunting wanderer with not even a dog at his\nheels; but he was, because Mr. Belloc says so, a devout monotheist\nand had a lucid belief in personal immortality. His art was pure and\nexalted--there were little bone figures of steatopygous women in\nevidence. He had no connection with the Neanderthal predecessor--or\nelse he had jumped miraculously out of the Neanderthaler\u2019s bestial\nskin. Sometimes it seems to be one thing and sometimes the other. But\nall that stuff about Adam and Eve and the Garden and the Tree and the\nSerpent, so abundantly figured in Catholic painting and sculpture,\nseems to have dropped out of this new version of Catholic truth.\n\nYet those pictures are still shown to the faithful! And what the Fall\nbecomes in these new revelations of Catholicism, or whether there\nwas a Fall, historically speaking, Mr. Belloc leaves in the densest\nobscurity. I have read and re-read these articles of his, and I seek\nthose lucid Latin precisions he has promised me in vain. Was and is\nthat Eden story merely symbolical, and has the Church always taught\nthat it is merely symbolical? And if so, what in terms of current\nknowledge do these symbols stand for? Is it symbolical of some series\nof events in time or is it not? If it is, when and what were the\nevents in time? And if it is not, but if it is symbolical of some\nexperience or adventure or change in the life of each one of us, what\nis the nature of that personal fall? What is the significance of the\nGarden, the Innocence, the Tree, the Serpent? To get anything clear\nand hard out of Mr. Belloc\u2019s papers in reply to these questions is\nlike searching for a diamond in a lake of skilly. I am left with the\nuncomfortable feeling that Mr. Belloc is as vague and unbelieving about\nthis fundamental Catholic idea as the foggiest of foggy Protestants\nand Modernists, but that he has lacked the directness of mind to admit\nas much even to himself. Yet surely the whole system of salvation, the\nwhole Christian scheme, rests upon the presumption of a fall. Without\na fall, what is the value of salvation? Why redeem what has never been\nlost? Without a condemnation what is the struggle? What indeed, in that\ncase, is the Catholic Church about?\n\nWhat modern thought is about is a thing easier to explain. In the\n_Outline of History_, against which Mr. Belloc is rather carping\nthan levelling criticism, there is set out, as the main form of that\n_Outline_, a progressive development of conscious will in life. It is\nnot a form thrust upon the massed facts by any fanatical prepossession;\nit is a form they insisted upon assuming under my summarising hand.\nWhat is going on in this dispute is not that I am beating and putting\nover my ideas upon Mr. Belloc or that he is beating and putting over\nhis ideas upon me, but that the immense increase of light and knowledge\nduring the past century is imposing a new realisation of the quality\nand depth and import of life upon us both, and that I am acquiescent\nand he is recalcitrant. I judge his faith by the new history, and he\njudges the new history by his faith.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nFIXITY OR PROGRESS\n\n\nI am glad to say that we are emerging now from the worst of the\ncontroversial stuff, irritating and offensive, in which Mr. Belloc\nis so manifestly my master, and coming to matters of a more honest\ninterest.\n\nI have stuck to my argument through the cut and slash, sneer and\ninnuendo of Mr. Belloc\u2019s first twelve papers. I have done my best to\nbe kind and generous with him. I have made the best excuses I can for\nhim. I have shown how his oddities of bearing and style arise out of\nthe difficulties of his position, and how his absurd reasonings about\nNatural Selection and his deliberate and tedious bemuddlement of the\nearly Pal\u00e6olithic sub-men with the late Reindeer men and the Capsian\nmen are all conditioned by the necessity he is under to declare and\nbelieve that \u201cman\u201d is, as he puts it, a \u201cFixed Type,\u201d the same in the\npast and now and always. He is under this necessity because he believes\nthat otherwise the Christian faith cannot be made to stand up as a\nrational system, and because, as I have shown by a quotation of his own\nwords, he makes their compatibility with his idea of Catholic teaching\nhis criterion in the acceptance or rejection of facts.\n\nI will confess I do not think that things are as bad as this with\nChristianity. I believe a far better case could be made for Catholicism\nby an insistence that its value and justification lie in the change and\nin the direction of the human will, in giving comfort and consolation\nand peace, in producing saints and beautiful living; and that the truth\nof the history it tells of space and time is entirely in relation\nto the development of these spiritual aspects, and has no necessary\nconnection whatever with scientific truth. This line of thought is\nno novelty, and I do not see why Catholics should not keep to it and\nleave the outline of history alone. I do not say that it is a line of\napologetics that would convince me altogether, but it is one that would\nneed far more arduous discussion and merit, far more respect than Mr.\nBelloc\u2019s _a priori_ exploits, his limping lizards and flying pigs.\n\nBut it is not my business to remind Catholics of their own neglected\nphilosophers, and clearly the publication of Mr. Belloc\u2019s articles by\nthe _Universe_, the _Catholic Bulletin_, and the _Southern Cross_ shows\nthat the Catholic world of to-day is stoutly resolved to treat the fall\nof man and his unalterable nature as matters of fact, even if they are\nrather cloudy matters of fact, and to fight the realities of modern\nbiology and anthropology to the last ditch.\n\nSo the Catholics are pinned to this dogma of the fixity of man and\nthereby to a denial of progress. This vale of tears, they maintain,\nis as a whole a stagnant lake of tears, and there is no meaning to it\nbeyond the spiritual adventures of its individual lives. Go back in\ntime or forward, so long as man has been or will be, it is all the\nsame. You will find a world generally damned, with a select few, like\nMr. Belloc, on their way to eternal beatitude. That is all there is to\nthe spectacle. There is, in fact, no outline of history; there is just\na flow of individual lives; there is only birth and salvation or birth\nand damnation. That, I extract from Mr. Belloc and other contemporary\nwriters, is the Catholic\u2019s vision of life.\n\n\nTHE IDEA OF FIXED HUMANITY\n\nAnd it is not only the Catholic vision of life. It is a vision far\nmore widely accepted. I would say that, if we leave out the ideas of\ndamning or beatitude, it is the \u201ccommon-sense\u201d vision of the world.\nThe individual life is, to common-sense, all that matters, the entire\ndrama. There is from this popular and natural point of view no large,\ncomprehensive drama in which the individual life is a subordinate\npart. Just as to the untutored mind the world is flat, just as to Mr.\nBelloc during his biological research work in Sussex the species of pig\nremained a \u201cfixed type,\u201d so to the common intelligence life is nothing\nmore or less than \u201cMe,\u201d an unquestioned and unanalysed Me, against the\nuniverse.\n\nThe universe may indeed be imagined as ruled over and pervaded by God,\nand this world may be supposed to have extensions of hell and heaven;\nall sorts of pre-natal dooms and debts may affect the career of the Me,\nbut nevertheless the Me remains in the popular mind, nobbily integral,\none and indivisible, and either it ends and the drama ends with it, or\nit makes its distinct and special way to the Pit, or, with Belloc and\nthe Catholic community, to the beatitude he anticipates.\n\nThe individual self is primary to this natural, primitive, and\nprevalent mode of thinking. But it is not the only way of thinking\nabout life. The gist of the _Outline of History_ is to contradict\nthis self-centred conception of life and show that this absolute\nindividualism of our thought and destinies is largely illusory. We\ndo not live in ourselves, as we so readily imagine we do; we are\ncontributory parts in the progress of a greater being which is life,\nand which becomes now conscious of itself through human thought.\n\n\nTHE FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE\n\nNow here I think we get down, beneath all the frothings and\nbespatterings of controversy, to the fundamental difference between\nMr. Belloc and myself. It is this which gives our present controversy\nwhatever claim it can have to attention. Neither Mr. Belloc nor myself\nis a very profound or exhaustive philosopher. In ourselves we are very\nunimportant indeed. But we have this in common, that we can claim to\nbe very honestly expressive of the mental attitudes of clearly defined\ntypes of mind, and that we are sharply antithetical types.\n\nBy nature and training and circumstances Mr. Belloc stands for the\nstout sensible fellow who believes what he sees; who considers that\nhis sort always has been and always will be; who stands by accepted\nmorals and time-honoured ways of eating and drinking and amusement;\nwho loves--and grips as much as he can of--the good earth that gives\nus food for our toil; who begets children honestly by one beloved wife\nuntil she dies and then repeats the same wholesome process with the\nnext; who believes in immortality lest he should be sorry to grow old\nand die; who trusts in the Church and its teaching because visibly the\nChurch is a great and impressive fact, close at hand and extremely\nreassuring; who is a nationalist against all strangers because,\nconfound it! there are nations, and for Christendom against all pagans;\nwho finds even Chinamen and Indians remote and queer and funny. I do\nnot think that is an unfair picture of the ideals of Mr. Belloc and of\nhis close friend and ally, Mr. Chesterton, as they have spread them out\nfor us; and I admit they are warm and rosy ideals. But they are ideals\nand not realities. The real human being upon this swift-spinning planet\nis not that stalwart, entirely limited, fixed type resolved to keep\nso, stamping about the flat world under God\u2019s benevolent sky, eating,\ndrinking, disputing, and singing lustily, until he passes on to an\neternal individual beatitude with God and all the other blessed ones.\nHe is less like that every day, and more and more conscious of the\ndiscrepancy.\n\nI have read and admired and sympathised with the work of Mr. Belloc and\nMr. Chesterton since its very beginnings, but I find throughout it all\na curious defensive note. It may be I attribute distresses to them that\nthey do not feel. But it seems to me they are never quite sure in their\nminds about this \u201cfixed\u201d human being of theirs--the same yesterday,\nnow, and for ever. Mr. Belloc must be puzzled not a little by that\nvast parade of Evolution through the immeasurable ages which he admits\nhas occurred--a parade made by the Creative Force for no conceivable\nreason, since a \u201cfixed type\u201d might just as well have been created\nstraight away. He must realise that if man is the beginning and end of\nlife, then his Creator has worked within fantastically disproportionate\nmargins both of space and time. And in his chapters upon animal and\nhuman origins Mr. Belloc\u2019s almost obstinate ignorance of biological\nfacts, his fantastic \u201clogic,\u201d his pathetic and indubitably honest\nbelief in his non-existent \u201cEuropean authorities,\u201d his fumbling and\nevasion about Pal\u00e6olithic man, and above all his petty slights and\nprovocations to those whose views jar upon him, have nothing of the\nserenity of a man assured of his convictions, and all the irritability\nand snatching at any straw of advantage of a man terribly alarmed for\nhis dearest convictions. When Mr. Belloc gets to his beatitude he will\nfeel like a fish out of water. I believe Mr. Belloc and his friend Mr.\nChesterton are far too intelligent not to be subconsciously alive to\nthe immense and increasing difficulties of their positions, and that\nthey are fighting most desperately against any conscious realisation of\nthe true state of affairs.\n\n\nTHE IDEA OF PROGRESSIVE HUMANITY\n\nIt happens that my circumstances, and perhaps my mental temperament,\nhave brought my mind into almost dramatic opposition to that of Mr.\nBelloc. While his training was mainly in written history, the core\nof mine was the analytical exercises of comparative anatomy and\npal\u00e6ontology. I was brought up upon the spectacle of life in the\nuniverse as a steadily changing system. My education was a modern one,\nupon material and questionings impossible a hundred years ago. Things\nthat are fundamental and commonplaces to me have come, therefore,\nas belated, hostile, and extremely distressing challenges to the\nsatisfactions and acceptances of Mr. Belloc.\n\nNow, this picture of a fixed and unprogressive humanity working\nout an enormous multitude of individual lives from birth to either\neternal beatitude or to something not beatitude, hell or destruction\nor whatever else it may be that Mr. Belloc fails to make clear is the\nalternative to beatitude--this picture, which seems to be necessary to\nthe Catholic and probably to every form of Christian faith, and which\nis certainly necessary to the comfort of Mr. Belloc, has no validity\nwhatever for my mind. It is no more possible in my thought as a picture\nof reality than that ancient cosmogony which made the round earth\nrest upon an elephant, which stood upon a tortoise, which stood upon\nGod-knows-what.\n\nI do not know how the universe originated, or what it is fundamentally;\nI do not know how material substance is related to consciousness and\nwill; I doubt if any creature of my calibre is capable of knowing such\nthings; but at least I know enough to judge the elephant story and the\nfixed humanity story absurd. I do not know any convincing proof that\nProgress _must_ go on; I find no invincible imperative to progressive\nchange in my universe; but I remark that progressive change does go on,\nand that it is the form into which life falls more and more manifestly\nas our analysis penetrates and our knowledge increases. I set about\ncollecting what is known of life and the world in time and space, and I\nfind the broad outline falls steadily and persistently into a story of\nlife appearing and increasing in range, power, and co-operative unity\nof activity. I see knowledge increasing and human power increasing, I\nsee ever-increasing possibilities before life, and I see no limits set\nto it all. Existence impresses me as a perpetual dawn. Our lives, as\nI apprehend them, swim in expectation. This is not an outline I have\nthrust upon the facts; it is the outline that came naturally as the\nfacts were put in order.\n\nAnd it seems to me that we are waking up to the realisation that the\nindividual life does not stand alone, as people in the past have seemed\nto imagine it did, but that it is far truer to regard it as an episode\nin a greater life, which progresses and which need not die. The episode\nbegins and ends, but life goes on.\n\nMr. Belloc is so far removed from me mentally that he is unable to\nbelieve that this, clearly and honestly, is how I see things; he is\nmoved to explain it away by saying that I am trying to \u201cget rid of a\nGod,\u201d that I am a rotten Protestant, that this is what comes of being\nborn near London, that if I knew French and respected the Gentry all\nthis would be different, and so on, as the attentive student of his\ngreat apology for Catholicism has been able to observe. But all the\nwhile he is uncomfortably on the verge of being aware that I am a\nmere reporter of a vast mass of gathered knowledge and lengthened\nperspectives that towers up behind and above his neat and jolly\nmarionette show of the unchanging man and his sins and repentances and\nmercies, his astonishing punishments, and his preposterous eternal\nreward among the small eternities of the medi\u00e6val imagination. I\nstrut to no such personal beatitude. I have no such eternity of\nindividuation. The life to which I belong uses me and will pass on\nbeyond me, and I am content.\n\n\nTHE NEW THOUGHT AND THE OLD\n\nMr. Belloc is completely justified in devoting much more than half his\ncommentary to these fundamental issues and dealing with my account of\nthe appearance of Christianity and the story of the Church much more\ncompactly. It is this difference at the very roots of our minds which\nmatters to us, and it is the vital question we have to put before\nthe world. The rest is detail. I do believe and assert that a new\nattitude to life, a new and different vision of the world, a new moral\natmosphere and a different spirit of conduct, is coming into human\naffairs, as a result of the scientific analysis of the past hundred\nyears. It is only now reaching such a clearness of definition that it\ncan be recognised for what it is and pointed out.\n\nThe essential distinction of the newer thought in the world is in its\ndenial of the permanence of the self and in its realisation of the\nself\u2019s comparative unimportance. Even in our individual lives we are\nincreasingly interested in common and generalised things. The older\ncommoner life, the religious life just as much as the most worldly\nlife, seems to us excessively self-conscious. The religious life, its\nperpetual self-examination for sin and sinful motives, its straining\nsearch after personal perfection, appears in the new light as being\nscarcely less egotistical than a dandy\u2019s. And this new way of living\nand thinking is directly linked on to the idea of progress, which\nmakes life in general far more interesting than any individual life\ncan be, just as the self-centred life, whether it be religious and\naustere or vain or self-indulgent, is directly connected with the old\ndelusions of permanence which rob life in general of any sustained\ninterest. When one is really persuaded that there is nothing new under\nthe sun, then there is nothing worth living for whatever outside the\npersonal adventure, the dance between permanent individual beatitude or\npermanent individual damnation.\n\nAs this modern conception of life as a process of progressive change\nin which individuality of our order can be sometimes excessively\nexaggerated as it has been in the past and sometimes minimised as is\nhappening now--as this conception establishes itself, it changes the\nspirit of living and the values of our general ideas about living\nprofoundly. Lit only by a very bright light held low, an ordinary road\nbecomes a tangle of vivid surfaces and black shadows, and you cannot\ntell a puddle or a gutter from a ditch or a precipice. But in diffused\ndaylight you can see the proportions of every irregularity. So too with\nchanging illumination our world alters its aspects, and things that\nonce seemed monstrous and final are seen to be mere undulations in a\npracticable progress. We can realise now, as no one in the past was\never able to realise it, that man is a creature changing very rapidly\nfrom the life of a rare and solitary great ape to the life of a social\nand economic animal. He has traversed most of this tremendous change\nof phase in something in the nature of a million years. His whole\nbeing, mind and body alike, betrays the transition. We can trace the\nmitigations of his egotism through the development of religious and\ncustomary restraints. The recent work of the psycho-analyst enables us\nto understand something of the intricate system of suppressions and\ninhibitions that this adaptation to a more and more complex social\nlife has involved. We begin to realise how man has symbolised and\npersonified his difficulties, and to comprehend the mechanisms of his\nuncongenial but necessary self-restraint.\n\n\nOLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES\n\nThe disposition of those who apprehend this outline of history that\nmodern science has made plain to us, and who see all life as a system\nof progressive change, is by no means antagonistic to religion. They\nrealise the immense importance and the profound necessity of religion\nin this last great chapter of the story, the evolution of human\nsociety. But they see religion within the frame of fact; they do not,\nlike Mr. Belloc, look through religion at fact. Man has accommodated\nhis originally fierce and narrow egotism to the needs of an ever wider\nand more co-operative social life, very largely through the complex\nself-subjugations that religion has made possible. Within the shell and\ncover of religion the new less self-centred habits of mind have been\nable to develop. An immense mass of imaginative work, of mythology,\nof theology, that now seems tortuous, mystical, and fantastic, was\nnecessary for the casting of the new moral being of socialised man.\nWe seem to be entering upon a phase in which moral and intellectual\neducation may be able to free themselves from the last vestiges of\nthe mythology in which that new moral being was moulded; but it is\nungracious and false to the true outline of history to deny the\nnecessary part that the priest, the sacrifice, the magic ceremonial\nfor tribal welfare, the early tribal religions, have played in this\ntransfiguration of the sub-human into the modern human mind, upon which\nall our community rests to-day.\n\nIt is because of our sense of this continuity of our present\ndispositions with the religions upon which they are founded that so\nmany of us are loth to part with all the forms and phrases of the old\ncreeds and all the disciplines of time-honoured cults. Perhaps some of\nus (the present writer in the crowd among others) have been over-eager\nto read new significances into established phrases, and clothe new\nideas in the languages of the old scheme of salvation. It may be we\nhave been pouring new wine into old bottles. It may be better to admit\nfrankly that if man is not fixed Christianity is, and that mankind is\nnow growing out of Christianity; that indeed mankind is growing out of\nthe idea of Deity. This does not mean an end to religion, but it means\na fresh orientation of the religious life. It means a final severance\nwith those anthropomorphic conceptions of destiny, that interpretation\nof all things in terms of personality and will with which religion\nbegan. For many of us that still means a wrench and an effort. But the\nemphatic assertions of Mr. Belloc, the stand that Catholicism, as he\nexpounds it, makes against any progressive adaptation to the new spirit\nin human life, may render that effort easier.\n\n\n\n\nIn this examination of Mr. Belloc\u2019s opening and more fundamental\nattacks upon the _Outline of History_ I have shown sufficiently that\nMr. Belloc is incapable of evidence or discussion, that he imagines\nhis authorities, that he is careless and ignorant as to his facts and\nslovenly and tricky in his logic. I have dealt kindly but adequately\nwith his atrocious bad manners and his insolence and impudence. I do\nnot think it is worth while to go on through the second half of his\noutpourings with any particularity. It is exactly the same kind of\nthing, but upon more familiar ground and less fundamental issues. Mr.\nBelloc quibbles. He falsifies. For example, he imagines traditions to\nreinforce the Gospel account of Christ\u2019s teaching and to show that\nthe founder of Christianity was aware of his godhead and taught the\ndoctrine of the Trinity; he declares--just out of his head--that I\ndo not know it was the bull and not Mithra who was sacrificed in the\nsystem of Mithraism, though I state that quite plainly in a passage\nhe has ventured to ignore. And so on. The wonderful methods of the\nPal\u00e6olithic bow story repeat themselves with variations, time after\ntime. Why should I trouble to repeat the exposure in every case? I have\ndone enough to demonstrate the quality of this effort to bluff and\nbawl away accepted knowledge and manifest fact, and that is all that I\nset out to do.\n\nAnd this apparently is the present state of Catholic teaching.\nThis stuff I have examined is the current utterance of organised\nChristianity, so far as there is any utterance, upon the doctrines of\nthe Creation and the Fall--doctrines upon which rest the whole scheme\nof Christian salvation and the entire fabric of a Christian\u2019s faith.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Notes\n\n\nPunctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a\npredominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they\nwere not changed.\n\nSimple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation\nmarks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left\nunbalanced. Several apparent misspellings may be intentional, and\nhave not been changed.\n\nPage 69: \u201cMr. Belloc will get if he says\u201d probably is missing an \u201cit\u201d\nafter \u201cget\u201d.\n\nIllustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and\noutside quotations.\n\nPage 95: Part of the last paragraph was misprinted. Transcriber has\nattempted to correct that error. The original text was:\n\n  And this apparently is the present state of\n  Catholic teaching. This stuff I have examined is\n  ance of organised Christianity, so far as there is\n  representative stuff. This is the current utter-\n  ance of organised Christianity, so far as there is\n  any utterance, upon the doctrines of the Creation\n  and the Fall--doctrines upon which rest the whole\n  scheme of Christian salvation and the entire fabric\n  of a Christian\u2019s faith.","title":"Mr. Belloc objects to \"The outline of history\"","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":19965}