The Everlasting Man

[therealUT]

I am about 100 pages into G.K. Chesterson's most esteemed (or critiqued) work. Here are some interesting excerpts.

The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one. He has an unfair advantage and an unfair disadvantage. He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; he is propped up on artificial crutches called furniture. His mind has the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations. Alone 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. Alone among the animals he feels the need of averting his thought from the root realities of his own bodily being; of holding them as in the presence of some higher possibility which creates the mystery of shame. Whether we praise these things as natural to man or abuse them as artificial in nature, they remain in the same sense unique.

The best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it.

The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he never has heard.

It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue.

The [cave]man had drawn a stag just as the child had drawn a horse; because it was fun. The [cave]man had drawn a stag with his head turned as the child had drawn a pig with his eyes shut; because it was difficult. The child and the [cave]man, being both human, would be united by the brotherhood of men; and the brotherhood of men is even nobler when it bridges the abyss of ages than when it bridges only the chasm of class. But anyhow he would see no evidence of the caveman of crude evolutionism; because there is none to be seen.

Art is the signature of man.

This creature (man) was truly different from all other creatures; because he was a creator as well as a creature.

To say that religion came from reverencing a chief or sacrificing at a harvest is to put a highly elaborate cart before a really primitive horse.

We cannot say that religion arose out of the religious forms, because that is only another way of saying that it only arose when it existed already. It needed a certain sort of mind to see that there was anything mystical about the dreams or the dead.

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.

Man does not necessarily begin with despotism because he is barbarous, but very often finds his way to despotism because he is civilised. He finds it because he is experienced; or, what is often much the same thing, because he is exhausted.

It is at the end of the path called progress that men return to the king.

 

[OrangeSquare]

Careful allvol doesn't like book reviews.

LOL

 

[therealUT]

Maybe he just doesn't like books...

Anyway, this book is absolutely fascinating.

 

[allvol123]

Maybe he just doesn't like books...

Anyway, this book is absolutely fascinating.

Don't know why I was dragged into this?

Funny, the person that started the thread "What are you reading..." is described as not liking books?

:whistling:

 

[therealUT]

Don't know why I was dragged into this?

Funny, the person that started the thread "What are you reading..." is claimed to not like books?

:whistling:

I was just playing along with the joke. I meant nothing by it, and I apologize for any offense taken.

 

[allvol123]

I was just playing along with the joke. I meant nothing by it, and I apologize for any offense taken.

None taken. I was playing along with the playing along.