He knows nothing about such a date, nor does anybody else within enormously wide limits of time. These are only guesses based on slight and contradictory evidence. Conversely, he does not allow for the rapidity with which languages sometimes change before becoming fixed for very long periods; still less does he allow for the amazing differences which a comparatively short time will make in the development of the same word along different lines. No one without record to prove it could possibly think that the French word “guêpe” had any relation to the English word “wasp.” That the English word “penny” was the great-grandson of “denarius,” or that the German word “krieg” and the English word “war” were the same word come down through tortuous channels from an original Latin source, or that the English word “spade” was the same as the French word “epée,” the noble word for a sword. One could multiply instances indefinitely. Language sometimes changes with the greatest rapidity and takes on wholly new forms; then remains fixed for very long periods. And this development of language, like the development of everything else, completely contradicts the mechanical idea of a slow, inevitable, mechanical, blind process—which idea governed the mid-nineteenth century. But after allowing for these defects, it remains true that Mr. Wells’s summary on language is, as I have said, exceedingly well done. It is a good instance of the way in which the Author’s mind works best when it is dealing with concrete facts, and worst when it is in the region of hard, independent reasoning. Feed Mr. Wells’s pen with facts and he presents them excellently. Ask him to think, and he either quotes at random (and often confusedly and contradictorily) what other people have deduced (usually wrongly); or, now and then, very rarely, thinks for himself, and is then more confused and self-contradictory than ever. We shall find, when we come to the later division of his work and deal with his summary of known and recorded History, that there is very much less to complain of than there is in his imaginary Pre-history; though even in these later sections the moment he touches the Catholic Church or the tradition of the European gentry with their foundations in the Roman Empire, he reacts against them with such violence that he loses his judgment altogether. I desire here, at the end of the first division of my work, to summarize what I have had to say so far about the book, and it is only just that I should put down the bad side first and end with the best that can be said about it.