The Everlasting Man is a two-part history of mankind, Christ, and Christianity, by G. K. Chesterton. Published in 1925, it is to some extent a conscious rebuttal of H. G. Wells’ Outline of History, which embraced the evolutionary origins of humanity and denied the divinity of Jesus. Whereas Orthodoxy detailed Chesterton's own spiritual journey, in this book he tries to illustrate the spiritual journey of humanity, or at least of Western civilizat...
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The Everlasting Man is a two-part history of mankind, Christ, and Christianity, by G. K. Chesterton. Published in 1925, it is to some extent a conscious rebuttal of H. G. Wells’ Outline of History, which embraced the evolutionary origins of humanity and denied the divinity of Jesus. Whereas Orthodoxy detailed Chesterton's own spiritual journey, in this book he tries to illustrate the spiritual journey of humanity, or at least of Western civilization.
"There are two ways of getting home," Chesterton begins, "and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place." The Everlasting Man is addressed to those who have not gotten home in the first way, inviting them to approach their home in the second way.
According to the evolutionary outlines of history proposed by Wells and others, mankind is simply another sort of animal, and Jesus was a remarkable human being, but no more. Chesterton's thesis, as expressed in Part I of the book...
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