And so, having examined, explained, disposed of, and in part apologised for, Mr. Belloc’s personalities and the pervading inelegance of his manners, I shall turn with some relief from this unavoidably personal retort to questions of a more general interest. I propose as my first study of these modern Catholic apologetics, so valiantly produced by Mr. Belloc and so magnificently published and displayed by the Catholic press, to follow our hero’s courageous but unsteady progress through the mysteries of Natural Selection. And after that we shall come to Original Sin and Human Origins in the light of Mr. Belloc’s science and the phantom science of those phantom naturalists and anthropologists he calls to his assistance. II THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION STATED My first article upon Mr. Belloc’s _Companion to the Outline of History_ dealt, much against my inclination and as charitably and amiably as possible, with the oddities of Mr. Belloc’s manner and method, and those remarkable non-existent “European authorities” to whom he appeals habitually in moments of argumentative stress. I do not propose to go on thus girding at Mr. Belloc. He is a Catholic apologist, endorsed by Catholic authorities, and there is matter of very great importance for our consideration in what he has to say about the history of life and mankind. After his second paper is finished his abuse of me becomes merely incidental or indirect. He goes on to a staggering rush at Natural Selection. Let us see to where Catholic thought has got--if Mr. Belloc is to be trusted--in relation to this very fundamental matter. It is Mr. Belloc’s brilliant careless way to begin most of his arguments somewhere about the middle and put the end first. His opening peroration, so to speak, is a proclamation that this “Natural Selection”--whatever it is--is “an old and done-for theory of Darwin and Wallace.” It is “a laughing-stock for half a generation among competent men.” Mr. George Bernard Shaw does not believe in it! G. B. S. among the Fathers! That wonderful non-existent “latest European work” which plays so large a part in Mr. Belloc’s dialectic is summoned briefly, its adverse testimony is noted, and it is dismissed to the safe again. And then there is a brief statement of how these two vile fellows, Darwin and Wallace, set out upon this reprehensible theorising. What a ruthless exposé it is of the true motives of scientific people! “The process of thought was as follows: “‘There is no Mind at work in the universe; therefore changes of this sort must come from blind chance or at least _mechanically_. At all costs we must get rid of the idea of design: of a desired end conceived in a Creative Mind. Here is a theory which will make the whole process entirely mechanical and dead, and get rid of the necessity for a Creator.’”