Man was—within my own memory—even to the highbrow non-Catholic world, what he still is (I am glad to say) to the populace—the most certain, the most fixed, known thing in the world; for Man knows himself as he knows no other thing. Hence was there a security in the sense and application of justice; hence was there a powerful comprehension of the past. For it was rightly taken for granted that men had always acted upon much the same motives. Hence was there a hearty recognition of the human conscience (which every man discovers in himself), and a corresponding contempt for sentimental excuses of misconduct. Not only was this true of the dogmas, the disciplines, and the social effect of such remains of the Catholic Church as survived in the non-Catholic English-speaking world about us; but it was true of the intellectual heritage. Plain logic was accepted. The reason was given its due place. Men did not move by suggestion or by repetition; they still examined; and the presentation to that older generation (which I and all my contemporaries can remember) of statements unproved, the confusion of scientific hypothesis with scientific fact, were ridiculed. They were less and less ridiculed, it is true, as the nineteenth century drew to its close. Confusion of thought became more prevalent, and the swallowing whole of the last unproved and improbable affirmation in Biology, Pre-history, or Textual Criticism was already growing to be a habit. But the habit was not yet universal. Now the lesson to be learnt from the immense sale of such a second-rate popular book as Mr. Wells’s _Outline of History_ is that the old doctrines, for the great mass of our modern English-speaking non-Catholic population have gone. Mr. Wells ridicules the Resurrection; the Incarnation he could, of course, not grasp, but _also_—and here is the significant point—he does not think that others really entertain it. He does not admit any part of the Christian scheme. On the intellectual side he proposes as true things of which we know nothing; and as obviously untrue things on which the best minds of Europe have long been assured. Note you, in all this he is not an innovator. He challenges no one. He risks nothing. He follows the sheep. Mr. Wells makes no attempt to be a leader. He merely puts, in a nice, clear, simple fashion, that which the myriads to whom he addresses himself already believe—that there is no Creator, no Saviour, no Resurrection, no Immortality, no Communion of Saints.