At any rate the huge upheaval of the sixteenth century, ending in the final breakdown of the seventeenth, is what I have called it: the chief event in human history since the Incarnation. It may be compared to some geological upheaval in which the whole countryside bursts up into flame, eruption, and chaos, but instead of settling down again into one landscape as it was before, breaks asunder, leaving an impassable gulf between two now wholly separate districts. Now Mr. Wells does not appreciate what the Reformation was, because he does not appreciate what it destroyed. Those little sneers at the united Catholic civilization, that perpetual Tin Chapel talk about the “Teaching of Jesus of Nazareth,” that ceaseless use of the word “Christianity” in the sense of whatever is common to the Protestant sects of his acquaintance—as though the test of Being were not Unity!—all this shows that he does not appreciate what he is dealing with. He never sees the Catholic Church as a unique Institution, and a unique historical phenomenon. He is always putting it (as do the most of our textbooks) into sham categories confused in a sham similarity. The Catholic Church is to Mr. Wells (as to all his kind) one religion out of many religions. It talks (he thinks) of but one Incarnation out of many incarnations; it has (he thinks) but one sacrificial system out of many sacrificial systems—and so on. But the whole point of the Catholic Church is that, true or false, it stands quite apart from anything else in the history of our Race. It assumes as no other system ever did a universal Divine and absolute authority: and that authority not vague but detailed, specialized, insistent, manifold, covering all human life. The Catholic Church says “I am of God, none else is of God. God (made man for our sake) intended and created me. By His voice in me are you at unison with all God’s works, and so with your own end and nature. I am; and I bear witness for ever.” The claim may be true or fantastic: but not to know what it is nor what a hold it had (and has) on men, nor how it made Europe, is the prime cause of Mr. Wells’s inability to grasp the history of his own race. The history of other races he can deal with better. All that he has to say on the Mogul Empire of India, for instance, is admirable, save, of course, when he tries to think; as, for instance, when he pronounces that education is information upon “realities”—without having, apparently, heard that, upon what philosophy you hold, depends what you call reality—and upon your scheme of values what is worth teaching. He is excellent in his little sketch of the gypsies on page 457. He is picturesque on Tamerlane. But when he comes to the contact between Asia and Europe Giant Pope appears again. He thinks the conversion of Asia to have been a very simple matter, merely missed because Giant Pope was trying to save that imperilled Europe of his instead of talking at large on “Jesus of Nazareth.”