INTRODUCTION
Mr. H. G. Wellsbrought out some time ago anOutline of History, the object of which was to deny the Christian religion.
I examined this production for the benefit of my co-religionists in the columns of certain Catholic papers. I did full justice to Mr. Wells’s talents as a writer, but I exposed his ill acquaintance with modern work on Biology, with early Christian writing and tradition, with Christian doctrine itself: and, in general, his incompetence.
Stung by this exposure, Mr. Wells has just brought out against me a small pamphlet, under the title ofMr. Belloc Objects to the “Outline of History.”It is an excited, popular, crude attack, full of personal insult and brawling, and ample proof that he is hit. But it is singularly weak in argument, confused in reply, and, as I shall show in a moment, shirks nine-tenths of the very damaging criticism which I directed against his book.
That book denies a creative God. There is no God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. The Incarnation is a myth; the Resurrection a falsehood; the Eucharist a mummery.
Probably Mr. Wells is thus infuriated, not only at being exposed, but also because he cannot understand how such an assault upon religious truth should possibly provoke resentment; yet I think I can explain the thing to him by a parable.
Supposing (it is mere hypothesis) that a man were to attack the Royal Family, and His Majesty in particular, jeering at the functions which monarchy performs for the State and holding up the King of England to contempt.
Mr. Wells would be the first to admit that a man somisbehaving himself would receive very hard knocks indeed. He would be called severely to account on all sides. It would be said that his spite arose from some personal grievance against the Great; that he thus relieved his soreness at feeling himself socially neglected, and so on. He might justify himself as a martyr in the cause of political duty, but he would be a fool if he did not look out for squalls.
Now the great and fundamental truths of the Christian religion are still sacred to quite a number of Mr. Wells’s fellow-citizens, including myself. Our attachment to them is at least as strong as the loyalty of the average Englishman to the Royal Family; and if he attacks them by way ofHistory—making out thatHistorydisproves the Christian religion—then it is not, as he seems to imagine, an outrage; but, on the contrary, a natural and inevitable consequence that he should be taken to task, and his competence for writing history severely examined.
I propose to reply in this pamphlet, not because I have any intention of being drawn into a slanging match with a writer who is my superior in this form of art, but because no challenge to Truth must be allowed to pass unheeded. So far from imitating Mr. Wells, I shall take care when I publish—as I do in a few weeks—my whole book, entitledA Companion to Mr. Wells’s “Outline of History,”to go carefully over my text and to cut out anything which could be construed into mere personal attack; though I shall preserve, of course, and even add to, the due and often severe criticism which Mr. Wells deserves for pretending to teach others on the basis of his own most insufficient instruction.
I should, no doubt, greatly increase the circulation of this little pamphlet of mine were I to season it with those offensive references to personal habits and appearance which are now fashionable between contemporaries. But I do not aim at any large circulation, beyond that reasonable amount which will secure my being heard by the people whose attention is worth having.
Invective such as Mr. Wells substitutes for argumentis wholly irrelevant. When you are discussing the competence of a man to write history, it is utterly meaningless to throw about the jeers of the gutter on his dress, accent or any other private detail concerning him. If you discover a man pretending to write about Roman antiquity and yet wholly blind to the effect of Latin literature, you rightly point out his ignorance. But it is not to the purpose to accuse him of having a round face or a thin voice. Indeed, were invective my object (which it most certainly is not), I should rather have answered in verse as being the more incisive and enduring form.
If it be a test of literary victory over an opponent to make him foam at the mouth, then I have won hands down; but I do not regard Mr. Wells as my opponent, nor am I seeking any victory. I am simply taking a book which proposes to destroy the Faith of Christian men by the recital of pretended history, and showing that the history is bad. While praising many qualities in the book, I point out with chapter and verse that the history is uninformed. That is my point and my only point.
Now that I have made it, I hope, quite clear that I am neither interested in Mr. Wells’s personalities nor intend to go one better upon them, but to deal strictly with things capable of argument and intelligent examination, let us cut the cackle and come to the horses.
* * * * *
Mr. Wells’s pamphlet against me, to which I am here replying, is a web of six elements. These are not put in any regular order, and the author himself would probably not be capable of analysing them; but a competent critic has no difficulty in separating them one from the other.
Theyare:—
First: A number of shrill grievances on general grounds. For instance, that though I have praised him highly I have not praised him highly enough; that where I had to blame him I have used adjectives upon his work such as “confused,” “ignorant,” which were not warranted; that in general he is an ill-used fellow, and is moved to complain most bitterly.
Secondly: He violently (and this is the main gist of all his pamphlet) assaults me for pointing out that his statement of Darwinian Natural Selection as the chief agent of evolution is antiquated stuff, exploded, and proves him quite unacquainted with modern work. Here he jeers at me as putting on a pose of special learning, andchallenges me to quote any modern authorities substantiating my criticism. He calls my argument fantastic, a thing made up out of my own head, without any authority from competent biologists. He denies the existence of any such group of modern men of science opposed to Darwinian Natural Selection. It is an amazing thing that his ignorance should reach such a level as that, but it does. And it is there I am going to hammer him.
Thirdly: There runs all through the little pamphlet, and still more through the book itself, a startling ignorance upon the Catholic Church, and in particular the idea that the Church is opposed to scientific work, even such elementary science as Mr. Wells attempts to expound.
Fourthly: He complains that I have in certain specific points misread his meaning, misstated his conclusions or affirmations, and made errors myself in attempting to correct his. He brings, it is true, no more than three specific allegations; three out of a total of I know not how many score, in a body of work which catches him up and exposes him over and over again. Nevertheless, such as they are, being specific allegations, however few, they must in justice be met; and I will here meet them.
Fifthly: (and most significant): There is the embarrassed silence of Mr. Wells’s pamphlet: his inability to meet nine-tenths of the points I have brought against him, and his discreet shirking all mention of them.
Sixthly: The book ends with Mr. Wells’s usual glorious vision of a glorious Millennium contrasted with the sad blindness of Catholics in general, and myself in particular, to this approaching Seventh Monarchy.
I will deal with these six matters which build up Mr. Wells’s pamphlet, taking them in the order I have given.