Nowadays they do not. We are compelled to meet them as inferiors. They put forward arguments in a circle; they assume their own conclusions. They are not aware of their own first principles. They take it for granted that their own first principles are accepted by their opponents. They generalize from instances not only few, but often actually abnormal. They compel fact to meet theory instead of basing theory upon fact. Above all, have they that especial mark of unintelligence, the hunger for over-simplicity, the determination to be quite sure of everything and to make everything fit in with a mechanical formula. It has been well said by the greatest of modern Spanish artists that the chief need of the Catholic Church to-day is an opponent worthy of her stature. She has hardly found one in Mr. Wells. CHAPTER VIII BUDDHISM AS A STICK WITH WHICH TO BEAT THE CHRISTIAN The general survey of recorded antiquity continues to be very well set down in the _Outline of History_ in every respect where the author is dealing with known facts. Of all parts of the book this is perhaps the most successful: I mean the setting down of what we know of Man between the origins of record and the growth of the Roman Empire. But even in this well-written and straightforward section, Mr. Wells falls into that common fault of the modern book-led townsman: the acceptation of something he has seen in print against the evidence of his own senses. This is particularly noticeable in his account of the Jewish people. Theories as to the early history of Jewish thought remain mere theories, and their statement as fact, though very common nowadays, is unhistorical; as is, for that matter, the great bulk of what is called “the higher criticism.” But the statement that the Jews are not a race but a religion, is a statement which flies in the face of ordinary experience. It is a statement constantly met with, for it has a very obvious motive on the part of the Jews, the motive of a people in peril who seek protection through concealment. But as History, i.e. statement of fact, it is nonsense. What proves it nonsense is the simple fact that when a Jew comes into the room, everybody knows that he is a Jew, and nobody either knows or cares what his religion may be. The Jews are not a religion; they are a race and nation: and a race and nation very distinct indeed. Though it should be reprinted twenty thousand times in twenty thousand popular textbooks that they are not a race, no sensible man would be convinced; for sensible men prefer the evidence of their senses to the authority of print.