34 pages • 1 hour read
G. K. ChestertonThe Everlasting Man
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Non-Evolutionary Trajectory of History
Chesterton begins his second chapter with the statement that “Science is weak about these prehistoric things” (61), setting the stage for the argument that will follow: as much stock and trust that we put in scientific inquiry, history is simply not the kind of thing that can be studied in that empirically verifiable manner to which we might like to set it up. It is not like chemistry, nor physics, nor biology—sciences in which knowledge advances through empirically verifiable data and experiments that can be replicated and proven to be either true or false. Because of this, history is vulnerable to misinterpretation, to mistranslation, to preconceived notions and biases. Chesterton’s principal argument is that the history of humankind has been subject to a gross misinterpretation due to a lack of objectivity and the existence of certain preconceived notions illogically carried over from the theory of evolution and applied to the progress of humanity.
Rather than seeing history progress in a straight line from humble, irrational, and uncivilized beginnings, we should view history rather as an undulating vector, progressing and regressing at various intervals based on time, culture, place, and circumstances. This means that contrary to popular belief, “the prehistoric period need not mean the primitive period, in the sense of the barbaric or bestial period” (68-69). Too many simply assume that as time goes on, humanity necessarily progresses in all areas: science, education, morality, sociological awareness, and sensitivity. This is a result of bias and assumption, rather than hard evidence, as Chesterton shows through the examples of the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Babylon, which were no less “advanced” than any civilization today. Chesterton is very clear in his assertion: “Prehistoric men of that sort were things exactly like men and men exceedingly like ourselves. They only happened to be men about whom we do not know much, for the simple reason that they have left no records or chronicles; but all that we do know about them makes them just as human and ordinary as men in a medieval manor or a Greek city” (87).
The Radical Uniqueness of Christianity
Chesterton argues that when various creeds and systems set under the umbrella of religion are compared and related to one another through comparative religious studies, this is really “comparing things that are really quite incomparable” (155). He believes that the Christian church and doctrine are in no way like other religions due to the fact that Christianity makes a claim that no other religion makes: that the supreme and singular divinity to which the totality of the universe owes its existence came to earth as the human being Jesus Christ, walked among his own creation, and founded a Church in which men and women can find their ultimate happiness. Because no other religion or belief system makes such a claim about the divine, Christianity is a categorically different kind of thing to other religions: “there is no comparison between God and the gods” (188), since pagan and polytheistic conceptions of gods were materialistic and, ultimately, mythological.
The most explicit claim Chesterton makes about the singularity of Christianity compared even to other monotheistic religions rests on the dual nature of Jesus as divine and human at the same time:
Even if the Church had mistaken his meaning, it would still be true that no other historical tradition except the Church had ever even made the same mistake. Mahomedans did not misunderstand Mahomet and suppose he was Allah. Jews did not misinterpret Moses and identify him with Jehovah. Why was this claim alone exaggerated unless this alone was made? Even if Christianity was one vast universal blunder, it is still a blunder as solitary as the Incarnation (399-00).
Chesterton posits that the claims of the Christian church need to be evaluated on their own terms, but even if they were to prove to be false, it would still be true that they would be completely idiosyncratic.
The Anomaly of the Human Animal
The Everlasting Man is a direct response to H. G. Wells and his book The Outline of History, which took a secular, evolution-inflected view of human progress. Chesterton counters with the argument that humans are unique, and thus are a different type of creature to the lower species because humans are the only creatures capable of art and abstract thought: “man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man” (49).
Human artistic capacity is evidence of a capacity that Chesterton calls the soul. Human beings are also the only animal to realize that it is an animal, and to note the similarities between humans and other creatures—but to Chesterton, this awareness again marks humans as completely different. The human person may share many physical traits with other creatures, but “if we attempt to regard him, as it were, as a quadruped standing on his hind legs, we shall find what follows far more fantastic and subversive than if he were standing on his head” (34).
Throughout the text, Chesterton repeatedly highlights distinctions between the human animal and the lower animals. For instance, he points out that the natural state of nakedness in which every other creature exists is not, for humans, “natural”—human beings always and everywhere clothe themselves. Laughter as well is particularly human: “[a]lone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself” (54).
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