G. K. Chesterton wrote "The Everlasting Man" as a Christian apologetics work. It is a rebuttal to H. G. Wells' "The Outline of History," which questions Wells' representations of human life, civilization, and Jesus Christ. Chesterton's work depicts humanity's spiritual path, with a concentration on Western civilization. The work is divided into two halves, "On the Creature Called Man" and "On the Man Called Christ." In the first section, Chesterton contends that humans are fundamentally different from other creatures. In the second half, he argues that Jesus and Christianity go beyond mere human leadership and religion, emphasizing their miraculous and unusual nature. C. S. Lewis commended "The Everlasting Man" with influencing his intellectual conversion to Christianity, calling it the best popular argument he knew. The book had a tremendous impact on Christian theology and apologetics, offering a persuasive case for Christianity's long-term significance and uniqueness in the face of modern skepticism.
Chesterton was born in Campden Hill, Kensington, London, as the son of Edward Chesterton (1841-1922), an estate agent, and Marie Louise, nee Grosjean, of Swiss French descent. Chesterton was baptized into the Church of England when he was one month old, despite his family's inconsistent Unitarian practice. According to his book, as a young man, he was captivated by the occult and, with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards. He attended St Paul's School before moving on to the Slade School of Art to study illustration. The Slade is a department of University College London where Chesterton also took literary studies, but he did not earn a degree in either field. Chesterton developed the fictional priest-detective Father Brown and wrote on apologetics. Even those who disagree with him acknowledge the broad popularity of works like Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton frequently referred to himself as an orthodox Christian, and he gradually identified this viewpoint with Catholicism before switching from high church Anglicanism. Biographers see him as a successor to Victorian authors like Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin.
