Introduction

[John]

What, if anything, is it that makes the human uniquely human? This, in part, is the question that G.K. Chesterton starts with in this classic exploration of human history. Responding to the evolutionary materialism of his contemporary (and antagonist) H.G. Wells, Chesterton in this work affirms human uniqueness and the unique message of the Christian faith. Writing in a time when social Darwinism was rampant, Chesterton instead argued that the idea that society has been steadily progressing from a state of primitivism and barbarity towards civilization is simply and flatly inaccurate. "Barbarism and civilization were not successive stages in the progress of the world," he affirms, with arguments drawn from the histories of both Egypt and Babylon.

I have drawn the questions from a mix of the generic nonfiction questions at Lit Lovers and the very specific questions included in the BookRags Study Guide, sometimes adapted. I don't completely trust the BookRags questions, so I reserve the right to revise the questions as I read the book. Feel completely free to criticize the questions if you think they misrepresent Chesterton's concepts.

I also reserve the right to add further questions as I read the book (again) and you should feel free to add questions of your own.

[Manuel]

Chesterton wrote The Everlasting Man as an answer to H.G. Wells best-seller The Outline of History, where he defends the myth of steady progress that C.S. Lewis also attacked in his essay The funeral of a great myth and his science fiction novels Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, using the same literary genre that that had made Wells famous. This Chesterton's book that we are reading (this is my fifth reading) influenced a lot C.S. Lewis, as we'll have occasion to point out in future comments.

[Fonch]

Manuel wrote: "Chesterton wrote The Everlasting Man as an answer to H.G. Wells best-seller The Outline of History, where he defends the myth of steady progress that C.S. Lewis also a..."
As a Historian i can not give up praising The "Everlasting Man" this book should be a mandatory Reading in all spanish universities of Philosophy and Letters of Spain. I have ever been a big admirer of the historical focus of G.K. Chesterton, and Hilaire and Christopher Arthur Dawson. I also praised his story about England, and this that G.K. Chesterton is a jornalist although he has a sixth feeling to come into in the truth of History much more tan several ideologized historians.

[Jill]

Even though I've read this before, I'm having a hard time plowing through it again. I think it's because GK is such a superb wordsmith that his elegant phraseology often obscures the meaning of what he's trying to convey. He also seems to assume a lot of his readers, familiarity with things not so familiar to us any more, leaps in reasoning, or substituting a fragment of insight for a carefully-articulated argument.
Maybe just the decline in my rational abilities as I age.

[Fonch]

Jill wrote: "Even though I've read this before, I'm having a hard time plowing through it again. I think it's because GK is such a superb wordsmith that his elegant phraseology often obscures the meaning of wha..."

For me Jill has defined the best qualities of G.K. Chesterton, that he was well known as the prince of paradoxes. His prose are beautiful images. He is an artista of the Word. Other thing that Jill said and i totally agree with her. It is that the reader when he read the Chesterton`s books feel that he is with a friend. Borges said about G.K. Chesterton that he had never written a page, which did not give a piece of happiness to the reader. The way of writting it is not neutral and in this case is really positive.

[Jill]

I think he has a more modest objective, stated in the intro, to give us "perspective" on things that seem familiar because we're too close to them. Maybe not so necessary for non-religious readers these days who are unfamiliar with Scripture and the Christian "story". For example, a friend teaching high school literature asked students to compare something they were reading to any other "creation story" they knew. Only one cited Genesis.

[John]

Jill wrote: "Even though I've read this before, I'm having a hard time plowing through it again. I think it's because GK is such a superb wordsmith that his elegant phraseology often obscures the meaning of wha..."

Or a decline in what is taught as a common standard for being educated?