Read Online The Collected Works of GK Chesterton Volume 2 The Everlasting Man St Francis of Assisi St Thomas Aquinas G K Chesterton Rutler Azar George Marlin S Jaki Books

Product details Series Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton (Book 2) Paperback 551 pages Publisher Ignatius Press (August 1, 1987) Language English ISBN-10 0898701171

The Collected Works of GK Chesterton Volume 2 The Everlasting Man St Francis of Assisi St Thomas Aquinas G K Chesterton Rutler Azar George Marlin S Jaki Books Reviews

• "Nobody has written...a real moral history of the Greeks... [t]he wisest men in the world set out to be natural; and the most unnatural thing in the world was the very first thing they did. The immediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading like a pestilence. The greatest and even the purest philosophers could not apparently avoid this low sort of lunacy." - from St Francis of Assisi
  
  There is no one better at explaining the world we live in and how it got that way than G.K. Chesterton; and while some authors are good at placing historical figures in their time, Chesterton describes them in a way that transcends time. The portrait he paints in the first chapters of St. Francis of Assisi of the world Francis entered turns any pre-conceived notions one may have had of the medieval period on its head. He also rescues the great saint from those who have tried to turn him into some kind of nature-worshiping 1960's flower child.
  
  The Everlasting Man is a sort of history of religion in that it is a history of man. Chesterton defines what religion is, and proves how Christianity is unique from all the other philosophies that have ever been dreamed. Up until I read this book, I thought Plato owned the motif of the cave in literature no more. The beautiful balance of the Man in the Cave in Part 1 and the God in the Cave in Part 2 is nothing short of brilliant
  
  "This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present ... it was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here ... that Jesus Christ was born. God also was a Cave-Man, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously coloured, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures that he made had come to life."
  
  It's difficult to highlight a single chapter in a book that's full of highlights, but I'll say that I found "The War of the Gods and Demons" very interesting. It describes the pivotal struggle between Carthage and Rome; and though I knew the basic facts of the Punic wars, there were some particulars that don't turn up in popular histories - like Hannibal's name meaning "The Grace of Baal" in his own tongue. When you couple that with other horrifying facts - or rather when Chesterton does - a whole new meaning is attached to the Latin victory over their rivals. The gods really had "risen again, and the demons had been defeated after all."
  
  In the last book of the collection, we meet St. Thomas Aquinas; and there is a tinge of sadness as we read in the last chapter how this 'distant human mountain' was overshadowed by the Protestant theology of Martin Luther, 'a thing that no modern Protestant would be seen dead in a field with'
  
  "It is said that the great Reformer publicly burned the Summa Theologica and the works of Aquinas.. all the close-packed definitions that excluded so many errors and extremes; all the broad and balanced judgments upon the clash of loyalties or the choice of evils; all the liberal speculations upon the limits of government or the proper conditions of justice; ... all the allowances for human weakness and all the provisions for human health; all this mass of medieval humanism shriveled and curled up in smoke before the eyes of its enemy; and that great passionate peasant rejoiced darkly, because the day of the Intellect was over. Sentence by sentence it burned, and syllogism by syllogism; and the golden maxims turned to golden flames in that last and dying glory of all that had once been the great wisdom of the Greeks. The great central Synthesis of history, that was to have linked the ancient with the modern world, went up in smoke and, for half the world, was forgotten like a vapour."
  
  Ignatius Press has done a fantastic job in assembling these collected works. Before reading this second volume, I'd recommend anyone new to Chesterton to begin with Vol. 1 Heretics, Orthodoxy, the Blatchford Controversies.
• Chesterton is one of the greatest and overlooked writers of the last century. I went to a Catholic university in the Midwest, where we had to read Ibsen and Shaw, who were contemporaries of Chesterton and Belloc. I kind of feel cheated that I my Catholic alma mater didn't introduce me to these important Catholic writers.
• The physical book itself is a high-quality paperback product. The editing, proofreading, and general quality control is excellent. The content as written by Chesterton rather makes me wonder whether we as a species aren't devolving rather than evolving, since most of the humans I know are only barely able to read this or anything serious written 50 years ago or more.
  
  I myself, after years of reading newspapers, the internet, and popular fiction find that I have to concentrate to understand the point of just one of his sentences, and then I have to think back continually to the sense of a sequence of sentences to determine the larger point. I'm not challenged that way in normal reading, but I find that it's well worth it and would recommend it to anyone anywhere on the spectrum of belief in evolution and related topics.
• What can you say about GK Chesterton- great reading and very inspirational. The Roman Catholic Church is currently looking into possible sainthood for GK, so his writing is well worth taking a look at.
• I am very grateful that this volume was available through . I have wanted to read Chesterton for years and now I can begin. This item arrived in perfect condition and in a timely manner. Thank you.
• They are, after all, three of his best works.
• This was given as a gift.
• I love all G. K.Chesterton writings! I am a fan of G. K. Chesterton! Cannot get enough of his writings!
  Everlasting Man is a ' must read'!