The Everlasting Man

First published in 1925, G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man is a sweeping, provocative interpretation of human history, written in response to H. G. Wells’s influential The Outline of History. With characteristic wit, paradox and a gift for the unexpected, Chesterton challenges the notion that humanity is merely another branch of animal life and that Christianity is simply one religion among many. The book unfolds in two parts: the first considers the extraordinary nature of humanity, from prehistoric cave paintings to the emergence of civilisation and myth; the second turns to Christ, examining the birth of Christianity as an event that, in Chesterton’s view, transformed the meaning of history itself.

Neither conventional history nor dry theological argument, The Everlasting Man is a spirited act of intellectual and imaginative reassessment, inviting readers to look afresh at the familiar landmarks of the human story. Chesterton’s prose moves between grand historical sweep, comic observation and startling philosophical insight, revealing his conviction that humanity’s deepest questions cannot be answered by material explanations alone. Published three years after his reception into the Roman Catholic Church, the book develops the Christian vision first explored in Orthodoxy, extending Chesterton’s inquiry from the individual soul to the destiny of civilisation. Its influence reached far beyond its original audience: C. S. Lewis famously regarded it as the finest popular defence of Christianity he knew, and it remains one of Chesterton’s most enduring works of religious and cultural criticism.

From the book

"One of my first journalistic adventures, or misadventures, concerned a comment on Grant Allen, who had written a book about the Evolution of the Idea of God. I happened to remark that it would be much more interesting if God wrote a book about the evolution of the idea of Grant Allen."

— G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

On The Everlasting Man

“The best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man.”

— C. S. Lewis