Now, Mr. Wells has been very remiss indeed in this duty of consulting the right authorities, before sitting down to write even so elementary a history as this “Outline” of his. He had, at the outset, not more faculty for writing an elementary history than any other best-seller might have for writing a book on elementary mathematics; indeed, a good deal less, for our schools give a certain amount of elementary training in mathematics, but as yet no training to speak of in history. But it was manifestly apparent from the first issue of his book that Mr. Wells was rarely given the latest historical theories, let alone the latest historical discoveries. What is more extraordinary in a man so interested in such things, he does not know the modern trend of controversy in Pre-history and Anthropology. He remains away back in what I may call “the early Golden-Bough-Period”—that of Grant Allen’s _Evolution of the Idea of God_ in Pre-history. From internal evidence it would seem, as I shall point out in the text, that his studies in these matters stopped short—or at any rate crystallized—in 1893, the date of Ball’s book on Croll’s Theory of Glaciation and of the Weissmann articles in the _Contemporary Review_. And I am appalled to discover that he knows nothing of all the modern work against Darwinism, in which system—that is, in Darwinian Natural Selection—he retains the simple faith of the day—over thirty years ago—when he was “doing” elementary science in a class. It is the same with the recorded history of Europe. His informers referred him to no books wherein he might learn what force that Catholic Church was which made Europe. He did not compare—perhaps he never heard of—the various sources ascribed to our main political institutions, and the increasing evidence for their Latin origin. Now these disadvantages taken together have ruined the book. Had they not done so, I should have taken for Catholic readers a different line. I should have said: “This History is full of knowledge; its statements in Anthropology and Biology are cautious and well balanced, its conclusions on historical cause and effect are correct; its knowledge of fundamental historical processes, though slight, is sound: the outline is just. Nevertheless, do not follow the author in his antagonism to the Faith, in defence of which we have arguments both historical and philosophical of such and such a kind.” As it is, my task is an easier one. I can say to my readers: “Mr. Wells’s sketch of History is not insincere in spirit; it is simply out of drawing from lack of common instruction. He has not kept abreast of the modern scientific and historical work. He has not followed the general thought of Europe and America in matters of physical science. While, in history proper, he was never taught to appreciate the part played by Latin and Greek culture, and never even introduced to the history of the early Church.