868 



NA TURE 



[December 30, 1922 



best thing we owe to the war. It was at a gathering of 

 thinkers and social workers during the war that the idea 

 of teaching world-history to all nations on a common 

 plan was first mooted, and Mr. Wells responded to the 

 appeal. His " Outline " has sold in hundreds of 

 thousands, especially in the United States. It has 

 provoked demands among working men to be taught 

 history in that spirit ; it has changed the outlook and 

 the syllabuses of scores of teachers ; it has helped to 

 success other similar books such as the fascinating 

 " Story of Mankind " by Van Loon, which has come 

 oyer to us from America this autumn. 



In view of all this, it is paltry and unworthy to dwell 

 on minor defects or on differences of judgments, and 

 still worse to condemn Mr. Wells because not being a 

 " historian," he has done a work which " historians " 

 ought to have done over and over again before. 



It was probably this fact, that he was not a historian 

 in that sense, immersed in the details of some special 

 period or aspect of history, which, added to his own 

 incomparable powers of reception, production, and 

 imagination, enabled Mr. Wells to accomplish the feat. 

 The freshness of his mind prompts him constantly to 

 some interesting new view, some comparison especially oi 

 ancient and modern times, some wholesome challenge to 

 accepted judgments ; e.g. " It was not so much the Jews 

 that made the Bible, as the Bible that made the Jews." 

 " How important a century this sixth B.C. was in the 

 history of humanity. For not only were these Greek 

 philosophers beginning the research for clear ideas about 

 the universe and man's place in it, and Isaiah carrying 

 Jewish prophecy to its sublimest levels, but, as we shall 

 tell later, Gautama Buddha was then teaching in India 

 and Confucius and Lao Tse in China. From Athens to 

 the Pacific the human mind was astir." 



Even in the case of Rome, to which Mr. Wells still 

 does less than justice, it is enlightening to have the 

 comparison with our modern empire. " The Roman 

 empire after all was a very primitive organisation : it 

 did not educate, did not explain itself to its increasing 

 multitudes of citizens, did not invite their co-operation 

 in its decisions. There was no network of schools to 

 ensure a common understanding, no distribution of 

 news to sustain collective activity." 



All such comparisons, whether of contemporary 

 happenings or of earlier and later social states, are useful 

 and inspiring and arise from the synoptic frame of mind 

 which qualifies a man for such work as this. It is an 

 antidote to the excessive criticism and tendency to 

 pessimism which mark so much of our literature at the 

 present time. But it needs to be based on a sound 

 knowledge and appreciation of the historical fact, and 

 it is naturally (in this latter side that Mr. Wells is weaker. 

 He dins not estimate duly what Rome did for the world, 

 NO. 2774, VOL. I IO] 



the greatness of her legal work, its continued progress, 

 its permanence in the modern world. Nor does he 

 allow for the constructive value of the medieval Church 

 and Catholic doctrine. No word of Dante (or of 

 Descartes) with a whole chapter for Charles V. ! That 

 is a blemish impossible to pass over. It goes with a 

 general tendency in the book to lay stress rather on the 

 externals and the picturesque figures in history than 

 on the deeper, spiritual, or intellectual factors. Thus 

 Archimedes and Hero appear but not Pythagoras, 

 Stephenson and Watt but not Descartes and Leibniz, 

 or even Newton. Science appears as the transformer 

 of industry, the generator of steam-engines and steam- 

 ships, but not as the knitter-up of men's minds, the new 

 universal doctrine which replaces theological dogma. 

 Even science as the healer and preventer of disease 

 seems to find no place : there is no word of Hippocrates 

 or Pasteur. 



•We know well how easy it is in reviewing such a 

 book to draw up lists of inexcusable omissions. It 

 would be ungrateful in this case, for Mr. Wells has given 

 us so useful and attractive a gift and has worked so 

 valiantly for the cause both of history and of science, 

 and especially of science as coming into and modifying 

 history. His answer, no doubt, to the last criticism 

 would be that this was an introductory volume, and that 

 therefore he avoided such matters as philosophy. But 

 can one properly treat of religion without philosophy ? 

 And there are sympathetic chapters about Christ and 

 Buddha. It would help his general cause, which is the 

 salvation of mankind by education and unity, to lay 

 more stress on the spiritual or intellectually construct- 

 ive aspect of science and less on its mechanical applica- 

 tions. It is not the difficulties of posts and tariffs 

 which will ultimately bring mankind together in har- 

 monious progress : it will be a spiritual union of which 

 knowledge and sympathy, science and law are co- 

 operating factors, and may be traced growing, some- 

 times fitfully, and at various times and places, but never 

 quite extinguished from the beginning of history till 

 now. These should be the leading threads in any short 

 sketch of human history as a whole, and it is because of 

 their decisive contributions to those elements that 

 Greece, Rome, Christianity, and modern times deserve 

 a special place. F. S. Marvin. 



Naturalisation of Animals and Plants. 



The Naturalisation of Animals and Plants in New 

 Zealand. By the Hon. George M. Thomson. Pp. x 

 + 607. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 

 1922.) 42s. net. 



FROM those early days in the neolithic age when 

 the nomad tribesman drove his domestic stock 

 from the region of its creation to new areas, naturalisa- 



