The Everlasting Man

2014 Reprint of Original 1925 edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. “The Everlasting Man” is a work of Christian apologetics first published in 1925. Chesterton intended it to some extent as a deliberate rebuttal to H. G. Wells’ “The Outline of History”, disputing Wells’ portrayals of human life and civilization as a seamless development from animal life and of Jesus Christ as merely another charismatic figure. 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. C. S. Lewis credited “The Everlasting Man” with “baptizing” his intellect, much as George MacDonald’s writings had baptized his imagination, so as to make him more than half-converted well before he could bring himself to embrace Christianity. In a 1950 letter to Sheldon Vanauken, Lewis calls the book “the best popular apologetic I know,” and in 1947 he wrote to Rhonda Bodle: “the [very] best popular defense of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man.” The book was also cited by The Christian Century in a list of 10 books that “most shaped [Lewis’] vocational attitude and philosophy of life”.