The account of early Greek civilization is also well done, with only a little admixture of modern myth, including, unfortunately, one very stupid statement quoted from Jung, to the effect that human thought before the Athenians was a mere jumble of emotions. Human thought at all times was human thought, and was always clear or muddled according to the intelligence of the individual at work. If Mr. Wells had dealt with ancient Asia as he has dealt with ancient Greece, one would be able to say that, save for certain characteristic swallowing of guesswork without criticism, and for rather comic personal animosities (such as a passionate dislike of soldiers which makes him furious with Alexander the Great!), it is well enough; and, in proportion, selection and accuracy, not merely well enough, but admirable. Unfortunately, in the Asiatic section he inevitably comes across that kind of matter which always arouses in him an unbalanced anger: matter relating to the existence and quality of the Catholic Church. For in dealing with Asia he has to deal with Buddhism—and Buddhism has been used now for at least a hundred years as a stock example with which to attack the Faith. Not that the Europeans who profess such a strange and sudden affection for what is alien and inferior love Buddha, but that they hate Christ and His Church. I say that a use of Buddhism as a stick with which to beat the Christian is a stock trick of the anti-Christian, and therefore it was bound to appear in Mr. Wells’s _Outline_ with all the other old properties of the trade. And appear it duly does. The reason for this old trick is that Buddhism presents two features, both of which necessarily provoke the anti-Christian to a simulated friendship for it. In the first place, Buddhism is philosophically the negation of the Catholic idea, for it makes Personality an illusion, denies God, and reconciles man to life through despair. The Church, on the other hand, affirms Personality not only in ourselves but in God, Whom she proclaims and glorifies. She reconciles man to life not through despair but through hope. Now Buddhism, justly repugnant to the high life and intelligence of the West, is none the less a powerful instance to bring up against us. Affecting as it does something like one-third of the world, Buddhism can be set up as a rival to the Faith. It is not, like Mohammedanism, a heresy grafted upon the Catholic stock. It is a separate thing; and the hater of the Church cannot resist the temptation of saying, “Look! how much better than the Faith”! In the second place, Buddhism has acquired a well-developed system of ritual and organized veneration, with all the natural accompaniments of that human function—vestments and ornament and light, communal worship, and all the details wherein the body may sacramentally act with the soul.