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The Everlasting Man, by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

 

first published in 1925

 

 

  Table of Contents  
     
  Prefatory Note  
  Introduction: The Plan Of This Book  
  Part I: On the Creature Called Man  
 

I. The Man in the Cave

  
 

II. Professors and Prehistoric Men

  
 

III. The Antiquity of Civilisation

  
 

IV. God and Comparative Religion

  
 

V. Man and Mythologies

  
 

VI. The Demons and the Philosophers

  
 

VII. The War of the Gods and Demons

  
 

VIII. The End of the World

  
  Part II: On the Man Called Christ  
 

I. The God in the Cave

  
 

II. The Riddles of the Gospel

  
 

III. The Strangest Story in the World

  
 

IV. The Witness of the Heretics

  
 

V. The Escape from Paganism

  
 

VI. The Five Deaths of the Faith

  
  Conclusion and Appendices  
 

Conclusion: The Summary Of This Book

  
 

Appendix I. On Prehistoric Man

  
 

Appendix II. On Authority and Accuracy

  

 

 

 

  Prefatory Note  
     
  This book needs a preliminary note that its scope be not misunderstood. The view suggested is historical rather than theological, and does not deal directly with a religious change which has been the chief event of my own life; and about which I am already writing a more purely controversial volume. It is impossible, I hope, for any Catholic to write any book on any subject, above all this subject, without showing that he is a Catholic; but this study is not specially concerned with the differences between a Catholic and a Protestant. Much of it is devoted to many sorts of Pagans rather than any sort of Christians; and its thesis is that those who say that Christ stands side by side with similar myths, and his religion side by side with similar religions, are only repeating a very stale formula contradicted by a very striking fact. To suggest this I have not needed to go much beyond matters known to us all; I make no claim to learning; and have to depend for some things, as has rather become the fashion, on those who are more learned. As I have more than once differed from Mr. H. G. Wells in his view of history, it is the more right that I should here congratulate him on the courage and constructive imagination which carried through his vast and varied and intensely interesting work; but still more on having asserted the reasonable right of the amateur to do what he can with the facts which the specialists provide.