IVMY ERRORS
I oweit to Mr. Wells that any error or misstatement I may have committed in the great bulk of work which I did showing up the paucity of his knowledge and the confusion of his mind, should be corrected.
I now, therefore, deal with the specific, particular points, in which he says that I have misrepresented him or misunderstood him; and these I will take in their order, as they appear in his somewhat hysterical protest.
Of these alleged misstatements Mr. Wells manages to scrape up exactly six, out of I know not how many in the detailed and destructive criticism which I directed against his work.
But even six alleged misstatements (out of perhaps some hundreds of critical remarks) should in justice be dealt with, and I will deal with them here.
I will take his complaints in their order as they appear in his angry little pamphlet.
(1) I recommend him occasionally to a translation of foreign work, though he is, as a fact, better equipped than I am in the reading of Italian, Spanish, German, and Portuguese; while French comes to him much the same as his native tongue.
I accept his statement unreservedly, and beg leave to tell him that in German, Italian, Spanish, and even Portuguese, I am no use at all; and that I am altogether his inferior in French. For I have perpetually to consult better scholars than myself on the meaning of French words which I come across; I write the language painfully, and, on the few occasions when I have to speak it in public, I spend a vast amount of effort and am a burden to my friends before I can get my paper ready for delivery.
But it is only fair to myself to give him the reasons for my deplorable blunder. I honestly took it for granted that he was ignorant of Continental languages. I had no idea of his quite remarkable linguistic achievements, which are excelled only by two men out of my wide circle of acquaintance. And the reason that I fell into this error was that hisOutline of Historybetrayed no acquaintance with general European culture. My own acquaintance with that culture is no more than the general familiarity with it possessed by all men of average education, and average experience in travel, and average meeting with their fellows. Why Mr. Wells should have concealed far greater advantages I do not know; but, at any rate, he has certainly done so most successfully. No one reading hisOutline of Historycould imagine for a moment that he had an urbane and comprehensive view of Christendom based on the reading of French, German, Italian, Spanish—and Portuguese.
However, I was wrong, and I duly apologise.
(2) He accuses me of having put into his mouth the words “climbing up the family tree,” as applied to the embryo; which words, as a fact, he never used. Here, again, I am to blame—not, indeed, for having said that Mr. Wells used words which he never used, but for not having written with that clarity which the occasion demanded. I had no intention of saying that Mr. Wells had used this particular phrase himself. I quoted it between inverted commas, not because I ascribed it to himself, but because it was a sort of current slang phrase familiar enough when Mr. Wells and I were young and were both being taught the nonsense which he still so loyally defends.
The idea was that the embryo reproduced in various stages of its development the various stages of its ancestry in the evolutionary process. The proper scientific term for this conception or theory is “Recapitulation.” To this theory of Recapitulation Mr. Wells amply commits himself in his book. He brings it out specifically in connection with man. How his allusions to Recapitulation look in the light of modern scientific work we shall see in a moment. Theparticular point here is that he did not use the particular phrase “climbing up the family tree.” He did not, and I never intended to say that he did. I readily apologise for any misconception that may have arisen on that head. But I confess I cannot for the life of me see how the matter can be of the least importance!
Supposing Mr. Wells were to write a criticism of my book,Europe and the Faith, and were to say, “Mr. Belloc is for ever referring the main institutions of Europe to the Roman Empire,” and then were to add, out of his wide acquaintance with French literature, that fine expression from Verlaine, “O Rome! O Mère!”
I don’t think I should rush into print and protest that I had been abominably maligned. I should say that I was not the author of the expression (if anybody bothered to ask me), but that it put my opinion more tersely than I could have put it myself.
However, if Mr. Wells cannot bear the misunderstanding, he will be relieved to know that in my book I have got rid of it by the simple process of adding the words “as it was called in Mr. Wells’s youth and mine” before the offending phrase (and a very good epigrammatic one it is) “climbing up the family tree.”
(3) Mr. Wells complains that I accuse him of not having read Vialleton, and brings forward, in triumphant proof of my own ignorance of that great scientist, the fact that I passed an error in proof, allowing “Vailleton” to stand for “Vialleton.”
Here it is I that must defend myself.
I bought Vialleton’s great book (which is a destructive criticism of Darwinism of a 17-inch calibre) the week in which it came out, and have consulted it ever since. If Mr. Wells is reduced for ammunition to the picking out of one misprint in some hundred thousand words of matter, he must be in a terrible way.
But on the attached point, that I accuse him of never having read Vialleton, and that (as Mr. Wells himself roundly affirms) Vialleton does not knock Recapitulation sideways, I can only repeat that I have made no error at all; but that, on the contrary, it is clear Mr. Wells has never read the book, and probably never heard ofit until he saw the name quoted in my criticism. Had he really read Vialleton he could not have had the face to pretend that this great authority did not oppose the old-fashioned views Mr. Wells was putting forward.
Mr. Wells is foolish enough—and ignorant enough—to say that this leading European authority, one of the greatest living authorities on his subject, “mayhave seen fit inoneof his works” (my italics) to set right some “French student” (why French?) who had imagined that the embryo reproduced in detail all its ancestral life.
I might as well say that Darwin “may” in some one of his works have seen fit to set right some English student who imagined all animals to have been created out of mud in a week.
Why! the whole of that great book is nothing but one continuous bombardment of everything—let alone Recapitulation—which Mr. Wells was taught in his youth.
He will hear all about it in my book, and I am sure that he will wish, when he reads what modern science really says, that he had never talked about things of which he knows so little.
(4) He complains that I have abused him for stating as dogma (with large diagrams) Croll’s astronomical theory of glaciation as propounded—thirty-three years ago!—by Sir Robert Ball. But I did right to expose anything so monstrous. Not that astronomical factors may not, or rather must not, have been at work; but that the particular theory which he puts forward for his innocent readers as admitted scientific fact, has been dead and done for since 1894. Surely one has a right in 1926 to point out that the popular teacher laying down in that year as fact an hypothesis which was exploded over thirty years ago should be exposed.
(5) He says that I have attacked him for not accepting the theory that times of high glaciation were also times of high sea-level, and vice versa. He says that he has followed in this authorities later than the authorities of twenty years ago which I quoted.
He is perfectly right. I owe him an apology for this,and when my book comes out the passage shall be wholly modified in consonance with recent work. I over-emphasised the certitude of Boule and others; I admit that the point is in doubt and ought not to be treated as certain. Mr. Wells was obviously wrong in treating it as certain upon his side, for the whole debate still remains doubtful (as, for instance, in the latest work of all, Professor Coleman), but that does not excuse me for having been too positive on my own side.
(6) The last accusation Mr. Wells brings against me is that I misrepresent him in similar fashion upon two points, the Neanderthal quality of the Tasmanians (now extinct) and the use of the bow by Paleolithic Man.
As both these accusations turn on the same point (to wit, whether I was justified in reading confused writing as I did), they are essentially one accusation, and I will treat them as such.
In the matter of the bow being used by late Paleolithic Man the position is this.
Mr. Wells gives a long description of later Paleolithic Man (pages 51–56). In the course of this description he tells us (on page 54) that later Paleolithic Man disappeared and that a new culture took his place, possessing (what Paleolithic Man had not) domesticated animals, a knowledge of husbandry, bows and arrows, and the rest of it.
This, of course, is the orthodox doctrine of the famous Gap between Paleolithic Man and Neolithic Man on which our generation were all brought up. It is true that there are now guesses at the discovery of a link between them; still the gap is very marked.
He ends up with a summary of the whole affair on page 55, carried over to page 56, where the section ends.
Now,in the middleof this description of later Paleolithic Man (who, remember, had no bows and arrows), he has a set of paragraphs (on page 53) describing the well-known fact that these men executed drawings on rock surfaces. On the same page is given a specimen of these drawings, and above it, by way of title, the caption, “Mural Painting by Paleolithic Man.” This mural painting is nothing else but bows and arrows!It is a picture of four men hunting with large bows, three of them actually shooting arrows, and the unfortunate animals stuck full of arrows so that there may be no doubt.
Yet in the course of this very same description he says that it is “doubtful if they knew of the bow!” And that phrase comes on page 55, two whole pagesafterthe description of Mural drawings and pictures of bows and arrows.
The division about later Paleolithic Man—who, he has told us, was supplanted by Neolithic Man—comes to an end and a new division begins.
In this new division Mr. Wells suddenly starts to describe a type of Paleolithic Man upon whom the guess has been made that he came at the very end of the process and had a more advanced culture, including bows and arrows.
What is any man to make of such a confusion?
First, Paleolithic Man as an artist, illustrated by a picture of him shooting away like the devil.Then, the casual remark that he was too degraded to shoot at all.Thenthe end of Paleolithic Man and his replacement by Neolithic Man.ThenPaleolithic Man reappearing, pages after, with bows and arrows all complete?
It looks uncommonly as though Mr. Wells had written his first section, putting an end to Paleolithic Man and introducing Neolithic Man, before he had been told of the supposed later Paleolithic men who had bows and arrows: that he put in these latest Paleolithic men as an afterthought.
But that is only an inference from reading his confused order, and if he tells me that what he hadmeantto say was that there were two kinds of late Paleolithic men, one of whom had bows and arrows and the others had not, of course I accept what he says. Only, he should have written it plainly, and he should not have illustrated the part describing the men who had no bow and arrows with a large picture in which bows and arrows are the main thing.
The other case of the Tasmanian is a similar example of confused writing. Let the reader judge.
We have on page 43 and what follows a description of Neanderthal Man.
It is, as is usual with Mr. Wells, a mass of vague guess work, on very little evidence, put forward as certain facts. We have also the judgment of the author that those who regard Neanderthal Man as no ancestor of ours, but a side-line of development, have his approval; though he admits that the other view is held. This on page 49.
Then Mr. Wells steps sideways again. “No doubt” our own breed, “which includes the Tasmanians, was a very similar and parallel creature.” There is, of course, no ground for that “no doubt,” but that is by the way. He next goes on to say that some imaginary ancestor of ours and of the Tasmanians (whom he generously admits to be men), is not so far from us as to have allowed contemporary types to have eliminated, not indeed Neanderthal but the Neanderthaloid types. Then, on page 52, there is a smart return to the original position that Neanderthal Man was not an early type of our own breed, and that true men did not intermix with him.
Mr. Wells may protest against my calling all this sort of thing a rigmarole, but I think that is the right word for it. It is certainly not history, and, above all, it is not clear.
The confused impression left upon the reader’s mind by the confused writing is that Neanderthal Man was not true man, and yet that true man must have passed through a Neanderthal stage, having been both Neanderthal and not Neanderthal: as it were, so to speak, and somehow.
However, a critic’s misreading, though caused by the confusion of the author’s style and the lack of orderly arrangement in his mind, is none the less a misreading, and Mr. Wells may rest assured that when my book appears it shall be corrected. My perplexed guess at what Mr. Wells really meant shall be replaced by his own statement of what he meant, and I will, in these two cases of the Bow and the Tasmanian, emphasise the muddlement of his method while apologising for the error into which it led me as to his intention.
With this I conclude my review of Mr. Wells’s specific grievances of misstatement.
They are, as I have pointed out, only six in number. Out of a prolonged examination—covering nearly a hundred thousand words—he could find no others.
Of these six, only one (the fifth, that on the connection of sea level with glaciation) is a definite error of over-emphasis upon my part.
The first, my ignorance of his remarkable proficiency in modern language (including Portuguese), is more than natural, because he had made no use of such knowledge: nevertheless, I shall correct it in my book.
The second is wholly insignificant, and turns merely upon Mr. Wells’s misunderstanding of my use of inverted commas in a particular case.
In the third, about Vialleton, he is simply wrong, and, what is worse, pretends acquaintance with a book of which he clearly knows nothing.
So is he wrong about the fourth. Mr. Wells’s definite affirmation for popular consumption of a theory exploded more than thirty years ago was disgraceful.
On the sixth point, misreading due to Mr. Wells’s own confused order, I have promised him the small necessary redress, which he will receive.
Now, let me ask my reader, in conclusion, is it not remarkable that a man setting out to inform a large audience that God, and our Lord’s Divinity, and our own immortal destiny are all nonsense, doing so by a pretended “science” and favouring me as an insufficient critic of his book, can only find in some scores of my exposures of him six points, half of which tell heavily against himself, while two of the remainder are due to his own confusion and only one—my over-emphasis on glacial sea level—has any substance in it?