The Everlasting Man

The Everlasting Man written by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Everlasting Man is a two-part history of mankind, Christ, and Christianity published in 1925.

• 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.