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Highly influential in C. S. Lewis' conversion from atheism to Christianity, The Everlasting Man continues to inspire new generations of readers. Considered by many to be Chesterton's greatest masterpiece, this book declares his comprehensive view of world history as informed by the Incarnation. Retelling mankind's story from the very beginning, he shows how all human desires are fulfilled in the person of Christ and Christ's church. With his characteristic brilliance and irony, he argues that Christianity is not just a religion to stand beside other religions, for the fact of the Incarnation sets it apart. One of the most original and controversial theological works ever written, The Everlasting Man offers a commanding perspective of world history and aims to restore our sense of wonder in the universe, our God, and ourselves.… (more)
Christian apologetics is not my thing. On the other hand, Chesterton could be insightfully witty about ignorant anti-Christians. Like Oscar Wilde, Chesterton seems to write very insubstantially, and his work is best consumed in quotations, rather than in whole-book chunks. I don't think he's quite so precious as Wilde, though.
https://www.chesterton.org advertises a new, thoroughly annotated version of the book. Chesterton was an exceptionally erudite person so some of his allusions, being both erudite and dated, would be incomprehensible to many contemporary readers. ( )
I don't understand how this book continues to get such high ratings and still is being praised. Agreed, it clearly contains 'strokes of genius', insights that were cleverly found on the basis of the information available at the time (1925). So I'm not going to dispute that Chesterton had a very sharp mind. But this book is nearly a century old, which is an insurmountable handicap for a work that claims to offer a history of the world. His passages about prehistoric man and about the earliest civilizations are completely obsolete according to current insights. And Chesterton's language is – and I’ll try to stay polite – very derogatory and sometimes utterly racist: for example, he constantly uses the words 'rude savages' when talking about Australian aborigines, and the infamous n-word also crops up regularly. The whole book, exudes an exclusively white, Eurocentric spirit; you can't really blame Chesterton for being a child of his time, but he’s really laying it on thick. And then there’s his horrible, pedantic style, with a constant ridicule of dissenting opinions, especially those based on scientific research (which, by the way, immediately prompted him to make a slight adjustment in an appendix). Obviously, this is an extremely polemical work, with a single goal: namely jamming it down our throat that with the introduction of Christianity world history has taken a fundamentally different path. I could follow that somewhat philosophically and theologically (but not in the terms Chesterton uses), but historically this just doesn't make sense. I really looked forward to reading this, but unfortunately, it was another disappointment. I don't understand how this book continues to get such high ratings and still is being praised. Agreed, it clearly contains 'strokes of genius', insights that were cleverly found on the basis of the information available at the time (1925). So I'm not going to dispute that Chesterton had a very sharp mind. But this book is nearly a century old, which is an insurmountable handicap for a work that claims to offer a history of the world. His passages about prehistoric man and about the earliest civilizations are completely obsolete according to current insights. And Chesterton's language is – and I’ll try to stay polite – very derogatory and sometimes utterly racist: for example, he constantly uses the words 'rude savages' when talking about Australian aborigines, and the infamous n-word also crops up regularly. The whole book, exudes an exclusively white, Eurocentric spirit; you can't really blame Chesterton for being a child of his time, but he’s really laying it on thick. And then there’s his horrible, pedantic style, with a constant ridicule of dissenting opinions, especially those based on scientific research (which, by the way, immediately prompted him to make a slight adjustment in an appendix). Obviously, this is an extremely polemical work, with a single goal: namely jamming it down our throat that with the introduction of Christianity world history has taken a fundamentally different path. I could follow that somewhat philosophically and theologically (but not in the terms Chesterton uses), but historically this just doesn't make sense. I really looked forward to reading this, but unfortunately, it was another disappointment. For a view positive remarks, see my History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4399439729( )
Considered by many to be Chesterton's greatest masterpiece of all his writings, this is his whole view of world history as informed by the Incarnation. Beginning with the origin of man and the various religious attitudes throughout history, Chesterton shows how the fulfillment of all of man's desires takes place in the person of Christ and in Christ's Church.
There are two ways of going home; and one of them is to stay there.
Quotations
Art is the signature of man.
there are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
It never came into the mind of a monkey to bury another monkey with nuts in his grave to help him to the heavenly monkey house.
Talking of skulls, I am also aware of the story of the Cro-Magnam[sic] skull that was much larger and finer than a modern skull. It is a very funny story; because an eminent evolutionist, awakening to a somewhat belated caution, protested against anything being inferred from one specimen. It is the duty of a solitary skull to prove that our fathers were our inferiors. Any solitary skull presuming to prove that they were superior is felt to be suffering from swelled head.
Otherwise the two sides of the human mind could never have touched at all; and the brain of man would have remained cloven and double; one lobe of it dreaming impossible dreams and the other repeating invariable calculations.
Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its blessings refuse to bless.
Take for example the Aztecs and American Indians of the ancient empires of Mexico and Peru. They were at least as elaborate as Egypt or China and only less lively than that central civilization which is our own. But those who criticize that central civilization (which is always their own civilization) have a curious habit of not merely doing their legitimate duty in condemning its crimes, but of going out of their way to idealise its victims. They always assume that before the advent of Europe there was nothing anywhere but Eden. And Swinburne, in that spirited chorus of the nations in "Songs Before Sunrise", used an expression about Spain in her South American conquests which always struck me as very strange. He said something about 'her sins and sons through sinless lands dispersed', and how they 'made accursed the name of man and thrice accursed the name of God.' It may be reasonable enough that he should say the Spaniards were sinful, but why in the world should he say that the South Americans were sinless? Why should he have supposed that continent to be exclusively populated by archangels or saints perfect in heaven? It would be a strong thing to say of the most respectable neighborhood; but when we come to think of what we really do know of that society the remark is rather funny.
But the devil really kept his appointments and even in one sense kept his promises; even if a man sometimes wished afterwards, like Macbeth, that he had broken them.
But with the idea of employing the demons who get things done, a new idea appears more worthy of the demons. It may indeed be truly described as the idea of being worthy of the demons; of making oneself fit for their fastidious and exacting society. ... Sooner or later a man deliberately sets himself to do the most disgusting thing he can think of. It is felt that the extreme of evil will extort a sort of attention or answer from the evil powers under the surface of the world.
These Victorian theories have shifted a great deal in their shape and scope; but this habit of a rapid hardening of a hypothesis into a theory, and of a theory into an assumption, has hardly yet gone out of fashion.
But even here the admirable archaeologists who have deciphered line after line of miles of hieroglyphics may be tempted to read too much between the lines; even the real authority on Babylon may forget how fragmentary is his hard-won knowledge; may forget that Babylon has only heaved half a brick at him, though half a brick is better than no cuneiform.
It is chiefly interesting as evidence that the boldest plans for the future invoke the authority of the past; and that even a revolutionary seeks to satisfy himself that he is also a reactionary.
Democracy is a thing which is always breaking down through the complexity of civilization.
If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty;
But even about these unwritten histories of humanity, when humanity was quite certainly human, we can only conjecture with the greatest doubt and caution. And unfortunately doubt and caution are the last things commonly encouraged by the loose evolutionism of current culture. For that culture is full of curiosity; and the one thing that it cannot endure is the agony of agnosticism. It was in the Darwinian age that the word first became known and the thing first became impossible.
It is necessary to say plainly that all this ignorance is simply covered by impudence. Statements are made so plainly and positively that men have hardly the moral courage to pause upon them and find that they are without support.
The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it.
Last words
Pyramids are plainer than the tracks of the desert; without denying that wiser men than I may see tracks in what is to me the trackless sand.
Highly influential in C. S. Lewis' conversion from atheism to Christianity, The Everlasting Man continues to inspire new generations of readers. Considered by many to be Chesterton's greatest masterpiece, this book declares his comprehensive view of world history as informed by the Incarnation. Retelling mankind's story from the very beginning, he shows how all human desires are fulfilled in the person of Christ and Christ's church. With his characteristic brilliance and irony, he argues that Christianity is not just a religion to stand beside other religions, for the fact of the Incarnation sets it apart. One of the most original and controversial theological works ever written, The Everlasting Man offers a commanding perspective of world history and aims to restore our sense of wonder in the universe, our God, and ourselves.
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https://www.chesterton.org advertises a new, thoroughly annotated version of the book. Chesterton was an exceptionally erudite person so some of his allusions, being both erudite and dated, would be incomprehensible to many contemporary readers. (