I doubt if he knows himself what he means. He had a vague feeling for the moment, as he wrote the sentence, that it would be jollier to be a free Pagan Arab playing about than an Arab bound down by a religious system. Instead of saying that the change was a change towards the “less jolly,” he calls it a “retrogression”—which simply means that he thinks the word “progress” means nothing more than “getting towards the kind of thing I like.” In this, though he may not know it, he is perfectly right—that _is_ about the only meaning the word “progress” has in the mouths of its faithful flock. But then, to use Progress as a universal philosophy is essential nonsense. For different people will always like different things. Until you have a rational and firm faith (or philosophy) as to what is best, you have no way of distinguishing between going forwards and going backwards. I will not disappoint the reader if I quote, as a savoury, the most extravagant example of “progress” in this division. It is on page 393, and runs thus: “Hitherto men of reason and knowledge have never had the assurance and courage of the religious fanatic. But there can be little doubt that they have accumulated settled convictions and gathered confidence during the last few centuries. They have slowly found a means to power through the development of popular education and popular literature, and to-day they are far more disposed to say things plainly and to claim a dominating voice in the organization of human affairs than they have ever been before in the world’s history.” So now we know that the anti-Christian of the best-seller, of the sexual novel, of the star article, and the cheap textbook, is about to take over the governance of mankind. God help us if he does! But he won’t. CHAPTER XIII THE MIDDLE AGES All the end of the Sixth Book of Mr. Wells’s History is taken up with his judgment on what must properly be called the Middle Ages in Europe—that is, the period which begins with the great awakening of the West in the eleventh century and ends with the strains and difficulties of the fifteenth, to conclude in the crash of the Reformation. It is the period midway between that great stage of Christendom called the Dark Ages which ends about the year 1000 and the split of Christendom which comes after 1500. It covers nearly twenty pages.