The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical EditionVol. 3: Literature, Politics, Belief, 1927-1929

Popular Theologians: Mr. Wells, Mr. Belloc and Mr. Murry. An omnibus review of The Life of Jesus, by J. Middleton Murry; A Companion to Mr. Wells’s “Outline of History,” by Hilaire Belloc; Mr. Belloc Objects to the “Outline of History,” by H. G. Wells; Mr. Belloc Still Objects to the “Outline of History,” by Hilaire Belloc; The Anglo-Catholic Faith, by T. A. Lacey; and Modernism in the English Church, by Percy Gardner

The Monthly Criterion: A Literary Review, 5 (May 1927) 253-59

This is sometimes called the age of the specialist; it is also the age of the brilliant and voluble amateur. In some sciences, as mathematics and physics, the specialist is highly respected; in some, as in anthropology, it is difficult for the outsider always to distinguish between the specialist and the brilliant amateur; in others, such as history and theology, which have fallen into a certain decline, the amateur has it almost all his own way; and is judged, even from his lack of credentials, to speak with more authority than the specialist. An examination of the books under review will justify this assertion; a comparison of their sales would probably prove it.

The debate between Mr. Belloc and Mr. Wells is properly a theological debate, but, as is natural, our interest and amusement at the spectacle of these two highly paid pugilists is likely to eclipse our interest in the points at issue. Two black men, in a controversy, will sometimes taunt each other with being “niggers”; Mr. Wells and Mr. Belloc undertake to show each other up in their knowledge of sciences in which both are amateurs. Both seem to the uninstructed reader to have succeeded. Towards the end (if it is the end) Mr. Wells gains a tactical advantage. We observe that in the CompanionMr. Belloc attacks him on a number of points of ancient and modern history. Mr. Wells has not an historical mind; he has a prodigious gift of historical imagination, which is comparable to Carlyle’s, but this is quite a different gift from the understanding of history. Thatdemands a degree of culture, civilization and maturity which Mr. Wells does not possess. I observe that he does not answer Mr. Belloc’s objections to his account of history, and restricts the debate, on his side, to questions of comparative anatomy and pre-history. In this field he is much more competent, and here his peculiar imaginative gifts flourish. Mr. Belloc accordingly follows him on to this ground. He holds his own pretty well; but we feel that there is justice in Mr. Wells’s complaint that he has not made any clearer the real position of the Catholic Church concerning evolution theories. We distrust them both; we agree with them both. But journalism begets journalism; only journalism can triumph over journalism. In such a debate as this, the reader is only convinced of what he believed already.

Mr. Belloc says that Mr. Wells has never learned to think...