The Everlasting Man

Written as a reply to H. G. Wells’s sweeping, secular Outline of History, this 1925 study takes a longer view of what a human being actually is. Chesterton divides the argument in two. The first half looks at prehistoric man, the cave painter and toolmaker, insisting that people were never simply clever animals but something set apart from the beginning. The second half turns to Christ and the strange, uncomfortable claims of Christianity, which Chesterton reads as unlike any myth or philosophy that came before. Wit and paradox carry the reasoning, and the book helped nudge a young C. S. Lewis toward faith. Available here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.