Mr. Wells thinks it does. He thinks it means a miraculous birth without a human father, and, in particular, the miraculous birth of a divine being without a human father, of which central doctrine the instinct of mankind is full—wherefore, indeed, it does but seem the more absurd in Mr. Wells’s eyes. Mr. Wells may here plead that he sins in company; and he may also plead that, unlike the greater part of his errors, this error is not particularly old-fashioned. Ill-educated men of the English-speaking world constantly use the term “Immaculate Conception” under the impression that it means a miraculous _incarnation_. They do it almost as often as they talk of Socialism as meaning a wide distribution of property. But it will be to Mr. Wells’s advantage if, in future, he does not go wrong on this point. Insignificant as it may seem to him, it is a very characteristic test of general culture, and outside the world to which he belongs everybody laughs at this common blunder. Mr. Wells would be the first to ridicule a Continental journalist who should talk of “Sir Gladstone.” But this blunder about the Immaculate Conception—a doctrine affecting the whole of Christian theology, and a commonplace in the mouths of all instructed Europeans—is far less excusable. The term “Immaculate Conception” is a specific theological term, signifying the absence in a human soul from its first moment of original sin. It has nothing whatever to do with the idea that the origin of that human soul is supernatural, save in the sense in which the origin of all our souls is the effect of a supernatural creative act. Mr. Wells himself, for instance, believes (as do, I am sure, much the greater part of his readers) that he was immaculately conceived, and that the whole of the human race is so. We Catholics, on the contrary, believe this to be a peculiar state, attaching to the Mother of Jesus Christ and to no other human being. Is that quite clear? I hope so; and I hope we shall not see this howler falling again from a pen so distinguished.