There is a real splendour in these three almost consecutive passages.
And note incidentally how this facile controversialist bespatters
also my helpers and assistants. They do “hack work.” Palæolithic man,
speaking generally, was _not_ an archer. Only the later Palæolithic
men, dealing with a smaller quarry than the reindeer, seem to have
used the bow. Manifestly it is not I who am fitting my facts with
my theology here, but Mr. Belloc. He is inventing an error which is
incredible even to himself as he invents it, and he is filling up space
as hard as he can with indignation at my imaginary offence.
Why is he going on like this? In the interests of that Catholic soul
in danger? Possibly. But his pen is running so fast here, it seems to
me, not so much to get to something as to get away from something. The
Catholic soul most in danger in these papers of Mr. Belloc’s is Mr.
Belloc’s, and the thing he is running away from through these six long
disputations is a grisly beast, neither ape nor true man, called the
Neanderthaler, _Homo Neanderthalensis_. This _Homo Neanderthalensis_
is the real “palæolithic” man. For three-quarters of the “palæolithic”
age he was the only sort of man. The Reindeer men, the Capsian men, are
“modern” beside him. He was no more an archer than he was an electrical
engineer. He was no more an artist than Mr. Belloc is a man of science.
Instead of bothering with any more of the poor little bits of
argey-bargey about this or that detail in my account of the earlier
true men that Mr. Belloc sees fit to make--instead of discussing
whether these first human savages, who drew and painted like Bushmen
and hunted like Labrador Indians, did or did not progress in the arts
of life before they passed out of history, let me note now the far more
important matters that he refuses to look at.
Mr. Belloc makes a vast pother about _Eoanthropus_, which is no more
than a few bits of bone; he says nothing of the other creature to
whom I have devoted a whole chapter: the man that was not a man. Loud
headlines, challenging section headings, appeal in vain to Mr. Belloc’s
averted mind. Of this Neanderthal man we have plentiful evidence,
and the collection increases every year. Always in sufficiently old
deposits, and always with consistent characteristics. Here is a
creature which not only made implements but fires, which gathered
together ornamental stones, which buried its dead. Mr. Belloc says
burying the dead is a proof of a belief in immortality. And this
creature had strange teeth, differing widely from the human, more
elaborate and less bestial; it had a differently hung head; it was
chinless, it had a non-opposable thumb. Says M. Boule, the one
anthropologist known to Mr. Belloc: “In its absence of forehead the
Neanderthal type strikingly resembles the anthropoid apes.” And he adds
that it “must have possessed only a rudimentary psychic nature ...
markedly inferior to that of any modern race.” When I heard that Mr.
Belloc was going to explain and answer the _Outline of History_, my
thought went at once to this creature. What would Mr. Belloc say of it?
Would he put it before or after the Fall? Would he correct its anatomy
by wonderful new science out of his safe? Would he treat it like a
brother and say it held by the most exalted monotheism, or treat it as
a monster made to mislead wicked men?
He says nothing! He just walks away whenever it comes near him.
But I am sure it does not leave him. In the night, if not by day,
it must be asking him: “Have I a soul to save, Mr. Belloc? Is that
Heidelberg jawbone one of us, Mr. Belloc, or not? You’ve forgotten me,
Mr. Belloc. For four-fifths of the Palæolithic age I was ‘man.’ There
was no other. I shamble and I cannot walk erect and look up at heaven
as you do, Mr. Belloc, but dare you cast me to the dogs?”
No reply.
The poor Neanderthaler has to go to the dogs, I fear, by implication,
for Mr. Belloc puts it with all the convincing force of italics,
that “_Man is a fixed type._” We realise now why he wrote the four
wonderful chapters about Natural Selection that we have done our best
to appreciate. It was to seem to establish this idea of _fixed types_.
Man had to be shown as a “Fixed Type” for reasons that will soon be
apparent. Apart from Mr. Belloc’s assertion, there is no evidence that
man is any exception to the rest of living creatures. He changes. They
all change. All this remarkable discourse about bows or no bows and
about the high thinking and simple living of these wandering savages
of twenty or more thousand years ago, which runs through half a dozen
papers, seems to be an attempt to believe that these early men were
creatures exactly like ourselves; and an attempt to believe that the
more animal savages of the preceding hundred thousand years did not for
all practical purposes exist at all. An attempt to believe and induce
belief; not an attempt to demonstrate. Mr. Belloc emerges where he went
in, with much said and nothing proved, and the _Outline_ undamaged
by his attack. And emerging he makes a confession that he never was
really concerned with the facts of the case at all. “Sympathy or
antagonism with the Catholic faith is the only thing of real importance
in attempting to teach history”--and there you are! All these
argumentative gesticulations, all these tortured attempts to confute,
are acts of devotion to Mr. Belloc’s peculiar vision of the Catholic
faith.
I am afraid it is useless for me to suggest a pilgrimage to Mr.
Belloc, or I would ask him to visit a popular resort not two hours
by automobile from the little corner of France in which I am wont to
shelter my suburban Protestantism from the too bracing English winter.
That is the caves at Rochers Rouges, at which, as it happens, his one
quoted authority, M. Boule, worked for several years. There in an
atmosphere entirely “Latin” and “continental,” under the guidance of
Signor Alfredo Lorenzi, he can see for himself his Fixed Type Man at
successive levels of change. No northern man need be with him when
he faces the facts of these caves; no Protestant shadow need dog his
steps; his French, that rare distinguished gift, will be understood,
and he may even air such Provençal or Italian as he is master of.
The horrid Neanderthaler is not in evidence. But there, protected
by glass covers, he will be able to see the skeletons of Cro-Magnon
man and Grimaldi man lying in the very positions in which they were
discovered. He will see for himself the differences of level at
which they were found and have some help in imagining the ages that
separate the successive types. He will note massiveness of skull and
protrusion of jaw. He will see the stone implements they used, the
ashes of their fires, and have some material for imagining the quality
of their savagery. He can hunt about for arrow-heads to bear out his
valiant assertion that Palæolithic man was “an archer with an efficient
weapon.” He will hunt until stooping and the sunshine make him giddy,
in vain. And then, with these bones fresh in his mind, he should go to
the Museum at Monaco and see the skeleton of a modern human being. He
will find no end of loud talk and valiant singing and good red wine
necessary before he can get back to his faith in man as a _Fixed Type_.