The Everlasting Man: Recent Episodes

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In this book, Gilbert Keith Chesterton contends that in the context of Evolution, the rise of Mankind is a surprise, not just a higher sort of Ape, because we try to understand the universe. And likewise, in the context of Mythology, Christianity is a surprise. The religions to which Christianity is compared have founders who at best are offered as prophets, holy men, wise men. But Christ is not presented as another Prophet. Christ is presented as Emmanuel -- God With Us.

Per G.K.C.: "There is more of the wisdom that is one with surprise in any simple person, full of the sensitiveness of simplicity, who should expect the grass to wither and the birds to drop dead out of the air, when a strolling carpenter's apprentice said calmly and almost carelessly, like one looking over his shoulder: 'Before Abraham was, I am.' ... It is the one great startling statement that man has made since he spoke his first articulate word, instead of barking like a dog. Its unique character can be used as an argument against it as well as for it. It would be easy to concentrate on it as a case of isolated insanity; but it makes nothing but dust and nonsense of comparative religion."

This is the only book I've recorded at the request of fans; I'd never been asked before. I recorded each hour-long chapter straight through, usually without having read the chapter before. Might have sounded a bit strained and tired at the end of some chapters, but I wanted each to sound like a cohesive whole. I hope I've done Mr Chesterton's work justice here. Let me know.

Book Theme "Deliberate Thought" from Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com.

Preparatory Note: "This book needs a preliminary note that its scope be not misunderstood." Introduction: "There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there."

Part II Chapter III The Strangest Story in the World: "In the last chapter I have deliberately stressed what seems to be nowadays a neglected side of the New Testament story, but nobody will suppose, I imagine, that it is meant to obscure that side that may truly be called human."

Part II Chapter VI The Five Deaths of the Faith: "It is not the purpose of this book to trace the subsequent history of Christianity, especially the later history of Christianity; which involves controversies of which I hope to write more fully elsewhere. It is devoted only to the suggestion that Christianity, appearing amid heathen humanity, had all the character of a unique thing and even of a supernatural thing."

Part II On The Man Called Christ Chapter I The God in the Cave: "This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave."

Part II Chapter IV The Witness of the Heretics: "Christ founded the Church with two great figures of speech; in the final words to the Apostles who received authority to found it. The first was the phrase about founding it on Peter as on a rock; the second was the symbol of the keys."

Part I Chapter VI The Demons and The Philosophers: "I have dwelt at some little length on this imaginative sort of paganism, which has crowded the world with temples and is everywhere the parent of popular festivity. For the central history of civilisation, as I see it, consists of two further stages before the final stage of Christendom."

Part II Chapter V The Escape from Paganism: "The modern missionary, with his palm-leaf hat and his umbrella, has become rather a figure of fun. He is chaffed among men of the world for the ease with which he can be eaten by cannibals and the narrow bigotry which makes him regard the cannibal culture as lower than his own."

Part I Chapter VIII The End of the World: "I was once sitting on a summer day in a meadow in Kent under the shadow of a little village church, with a rather curious companion with whom I had just been walking through the woods."

Conclusion - The Summary of This Book: "I have taken the liberty once or twice of borrowing the excellent phrase about an Outline of History; though this study of a special truth and a special error can of course claim no sort of comparison with the rich and many-sided encyclopedia of history. for which that name was chosen." Appendix I - On Prehistoric Man: "On re-reading these pages I feel that I have tried in many places and with many words, to say something that might be said in one word. In a sense this study is meant to be superficial. That is. it is not meant as a study of the things that need to be studied. " Appendix II - On Authority and Accuracy: "In this book which is merely meant as a popular criticism of popular fallacies, often indeed of very vulgar errors, I feel that I have sometimes given an impression of scoffing at serious scientific work."

Part II Chapter II The Riddles of the Gospel: "To understand the nature of this chapter, it is necessary to recur to the nature of this book. The argument which is meant to be the backbone of the book is of the kind called the reductio ad absurdum."

Part I Chapter III The Antiquity of Civilization: "The modern man looking at the most ancient origins has been like a man watching for daybreak in a strange land; and expecting to see that dawn breaking behind bare uplands or solitary peaks."

Part I Chapter VII The War of the Gods and Demons: "The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing."

Part I Chapter V Man and Mythologies: "What are here called the Gods might almost alternatively be called the day-dreams. To compare them to dreams is not to deny that dreams can come true. To compare them to travellers' tales is not to deny that they may be true tales, or at least truthful tales."

Part I Chapter IV God and Comparative Religion: "I was once escorted over the Roman foundations of an ancient British city by a professor, who said something that seems to me a satire on a good many other professors. Possibly the professor saw the joke, though he maintained an iron gravity, and may or may not have realised that it was a joke against a great deal of what is called comparative religion."

Part I On The Creature Called Man Chapter I The Man in the Cave: "Far away in some strange constellation in skies infinitely remote, there is a small star, which astronomers may some day discover. At least I could never observe in the faces or demeanour of most astronomers or men of science any evidence that they have discovered it; though as a matter of fact they were walking about on it all the time."

Part I Chapter II Professors and Prehistoric Men: "Science is weak about these prehistoric things in a way that has hardly been noticed. The science whose modern marvels we all admire succeeds by incessantly adding to its data."