I now leave Mr. Wells’s _Outline of History_ in so far as it deals with guesses, unproved statements, and ascertained facts on Man as he existed before any known written record. I have devoted so large a proportion of my space to this earlier and vaguer part of the book because it is by far the most important. In it Mr. Wells, repeating the various materialist and other anti-Christian theories of his youth, has put before his readers an ethnography and a philosophy confused, indeed, but consistently opposed to the Catholic Faith. And it has been my business to distinguish what was demonstrably wrong in his statements, what exploded by recent scholarship and what solid and demonstrated; blaming his obvious unacquaintance with recent European thought, and his lack of mental grip, but praising his vividly picturesque style and his undoubted sincerity. The opportunity for speculating at large and affirming without proof in this prehistoric region is unlimited. Therefore it is here that Mr. Wells’s attack on the Catholic Faith is largely delivered; and since it is his antagonism to the Catholic Faith with which I am mainly concerned—for sympathy or antagonism with the Catholic Faith is the only thing of real importance in attempting to teach History—I have given to this section the considerable space my reader has traversed. Mr. Wells closes his repetitions of the old and often discarded theories upon Man before human record with Chapter XII, the end of his second book, and page 88 of the volume. Thence onwards he is to deal with History to which we have real witness, and it is noticeable that in the last pages of this first part, when he begins to deal with certain scientific fact, ascertained truth, and a certain amount of real knowledge, he becomes not only very much more reliable, but much more successful as a writer. His remarkable talent for compressing the statements or actual discoveries of others into readable short form comes out brilliantly. Thus even before he comes to the beginnings of human record, he has to deal with language, and he does so with a firmness of touch and an exactitude of form which everyone must admire, and no one more than I. The little passage only covers seven pages, but it is exceedingly well done. There is a good reason for this. Mr. Wells is here dealing with a mass of well-known material. His talents for compression and exposition have full scope; his weakness as a reasoner is not tried. Language is a positive thing. It is there, a real subject for analysis; you can study it. It is not moonshine like the “Old Man” who produced some very nasty God, nor like the palæolithic hunter who could not use bows and arrows, although he made pictures of himself using nothing else.