The Everlasting Man

“It is the simple truth that 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.”

The gap between human beings and the other animals is an infinite chasm, not because human beings are not animals—which they are—but because they are an altogether different kind of animal. This can be deduced by looking at something only humans do: creating art. No other creature fashions works of art to make meaning and purpose, and often simply for the joy of the thing.

“Man is the microcosm; man is the measure of all things; man is the image of God.”

A fundamental principle in classical philosophy—and in the Catholic tradition that adopted it—is that the human person is a potentially infinite creature because of the capacity of the mind, which is capable of reflecting and containing the mysteries of the universe. Combined with the capacity for love and interpersonal communion, this makes a human the image of God in the created world.

“In dealing with a past that has almost entirely perished, [the historian] can only go by evidence and not by experiment.”

Chesterton notes that while history is necessary and valuable, it does not carry the same kind of certainty as one of the empirical sciences in which experiments can be done, reviewed, and replicated. The work of the historian is based on evidence, and thus only with the right kind of evidence can conclusions be drawn—in certain instances, conclusions are quite sparse and vague, and so a simple error can perpetuate itself since there is no way to experiment or to prove a particular claim from the vast silence of history.

“Human civilisation is older than human records.”

A key aspect of Chesterton’s argument is that humans have been civilized from the very beginning. The oldest historical documents witness to the reality that humanity has always had civilizations, and that there is no recorded history of human beings acting in ways that are akin to those of the lower animals. The oldest historical record of human existence and activity is artwork, an activity usually associated with high culture and intelligence.

“Nakedness is not nature to him; it is not his life but rather his death; even in the vulgar sense of his death of cold. But clothes are worn for dignity or decency or decoration where they are not in any way wanted for warmth.”

The fact that human beings wear clothing is stark evidence for the fact that they are not like other creatures. What is most natural—nakedness—is not in fact natural for humans. What’s more, clothing is worn even when it is not necessary for warmth or protection or camouflage—it is worn and celebrated for being beautiful, or for the sake of some other purpose such as a ceremony or a rite of passage. Clothing is another uniquely human trait.

“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.”

Citizens of the modern Western world assume that totalitarianism and despotism is a mark of early culture—of a crude and uneducated civilization that only needs progress, education, and the passage of time to develop. Chesterton points out that in fact the opposite is more often the case. Almost seeming to predict modern tyrants like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, Chesterton notes that tyranny arises only in the wake of great advances in knowledge, technology, and social liberation.

“According to the real records available, barbarism and civilisation were not successive states in the progress of the world. They were conditions that existed side by side, as they still exist side by side.”

Aiding his argument against the misunderstanding of a quasi-evolutionary development of human civilization, Chesterton points out that the two opposite states of civilization and primitivism often exist at one and the same time. The world as a whole has not moved from one state to the other, but is constantly in flux, ebbing and flowing between these extremes.

“I am not at issue in this book with sincere and genuine scholars, but with a vast and vague public opinion which has been prematurely spread from certain imperfect investigations, and which has made fashionable a false notion of the whole history of humanity.”

Chesterton clarifies that he is not attempting to denigrate good and sincere scholarship, but that he is at odds with the popular picture painted by less than the whole truth. False impressions of the truth are often more damaging than simple ignorance, and so he is primarily concerned with erroneous half-truths and hypotheses.

“But if anyone fancies the contrast of monotheism and polytheism is only a matter of some people having one god and others a few more, for him it will be far nearer the truth to plunge into the elephantine extravagance of Brahmin cosmology.”

The common misconception is that monotheism is similar to polytheism—that the monotheist believes in one god as compared to many, as though the only difference were quantitative. In fact, monotheism understands the divine being to be the cause of the whole of reality and the source from which all existence flows; the monotheist believes in only one god because that is the only way that the universe can exist. A monotheist’s God is not the most supreme being among all other beings but must be the singular source of all existence.

“Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil.”

It is intrinsic to human nature to create and, in the process, feel that there is something greater than our normal human experience that art accesses. True art is greater than the sum of its parts and is imbued with meaning by a higher power—the artist—which happens because the artist is inspired by something ever greater and more vast than the human.

“Simple secularists still talk as if the Church had introduced a sort of schism between reason and religion. The truth is that the Church was actually the first thing that ever tried to combine reason and religion. There had never before been any such union of the priests and the philosophers.”

The Christian Church is often accused of despising reason and stymieing scientific advancement, but this is not the case. As Chesterton points out, it was actually Christianity that unite faith and reason in a way that ancient paganism and mythology was never able to do.

“In a word, mythology is a search.”

Chesterton believes that ancient mythology prepared the world for the coming of Christianity since myths were a search for what is most true and most influential in the cosmos. Myth-making happens when the imagination pursues the truth present within the human soul; mythology is not ultimately true religion, since it resides in the imagination alone.

“Now it is very right to rebuke our own race or religion for falling short of our own standards and ideals. But it is absurd to pretend that they fell lower than the other races and religions that professed the very opposite standards and ideals.”

Contrary to popular opinion, moderns have not just recently come out of some age when contemporary ideals had crystallized into perfection. Chesterton agrees that it is right to criticize current standards of ethics and conduct but notes that it is absurd to pretend that somehow our own actions have been any worse than those of any other civilization or age. In every age there have been evil and immorality.

“It is no more transcendental for a man to remember what he did in Babylon before he was born than to remember what he did in Brixton before he had a knock on the head.”

The idea of reincarnation should not be in any way more mystical or religious than the idea (and reality) that we inhabit the successive flow of time. Living the successive passage of time in multiple lives is not really any different than living the successive passage of time in a single life.

“[T]he material ends are hardly ever material to the men who fight. In any case no man will die for practical politics, just as no man will die for pay.”

A person facing their death will only choose or risk death when their ideals are worth living for. Nobody would die purely for money, though one may choose to risk death for the end towards which that money might be placed, such as the good of one’s life or one’s family. A vicious man could easily send others to die for the sake of material goods, since in that case death is an abstract concept; but even such a person would not himself die for the sake of wealth.

“Atheism became really possible in that abnormal time; for atheism is abnormality. It is not merely the denial of a dogma. It is the reversal of a subconscious assumption in the soul; the sense that there is a meaning and a direction in the world it sees.”

Contrary to the popular view, which sees a lack of religious belief as the default setting for human nature, Chesterton asserts that atheism is a negation of what human nature fundamentally assumes: that there is a real and intrinsic design to the cosmos, and that this design implies that what we call God designed it.

“[W]e are psychological Christians even when we are not theological ones.”

Chesterton argues that “cultural Christianity” exists because the Western world has been influenced and imbued by Christian ideals for the better part of two millennia. The imprint of Christian belief and principles is impossible to erase, it is a reality that will remain in the imagination and the heart of civilization indefinitely.

“The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic; it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true. Since that hour no mythologies have been made in the world. Mythology is a search.”

Once the incarnation occurred, the world could never be the same. Prior to divinity breaking into history in the flesh, mythology was a legitimate way to reach out to the divine in search of what was real. After the incarnation, however, Jesus Christ historically instantiated the final word of divinity.

“[T]his is the light; that the Catholic creed is catholic and that nothing else is catholic. The philosophy of the Church is universal. The philosophy of the philosophers was not universal.”

The curious thing about the Catholic faith, according to Chesterton, is that it is simultaneously radically particular—it claims that ultimate truth was found in one Jewish man born into 1st century Palestine—and completely universal in a way that no other philosophical or religious system has ever been, or could ever be. The philosophy of the Church is universal, capable of assuming any and all truths.

“Whatever else is true, it is emphatically not true that the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth were suitable to his time, but are no longer suitable to our time.”

People dismiss the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as found in the Gospels of the New Testament as simply products of their time. Chesterton argues that this is an argument only made by those woefully ignorant of Jesus and his historical context—for instance, there was no time at which Jesus’ teachings on marriage and divorce were socially acceptable and palatable. Jesus was just as scandalous and off-putting at the time in which he lived as he is today.

“Even if Christianity was one vast universal blunder, it is still a blunder as solitary as the Incarnation.”

Chesterton argues that Christianity as a system is unique in the history of ideas, as it is the only religion that has ever claimed to have God as it’s literal, historical founder. The other great monotheistic faiths of Judaism and Islam trace their roots back to Moses and Mohammed respectively, but do not claim divinity for these men. Thus, even if Christianity were not true, it remains utterly singular.

“The Church had to be both Roman and Greek and Jewish and African and Asiatic. In the very words of the Apostle of the Gentiles, it was indeed all things to all men. Christianity then was not merely crude and simple and was the very reverse of the growth of a barbaric time.”

The universality of the Church makes it appealing. It is not a national movement such as Judaism, nor a philosophical system, nor an empire or theocracy. Instead, it is truly universal, finding its origins in the intersection of the great Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures of the time. Because it was historical and political, it became all things to everyone.

“Nothing short of the extreme and strong and startling doctrine of the divinity of Christ will give that particular effect that can truly stir the popular sense like a trumpet; the idea of the king himself serving in the ranks like a common soldier.”

Chesterton finds moving the personal nature of the incarnation of Jesus Christ as both true God and true man. God did not remain above in heaven, absent and silent, but appeared in the ranks of men and women, in their very own flesh, and has shared in their suffering and their mortality.