It is a relief to turn from the nebulous emotionalism and egoistical self-centredness of the recent articles on My Religion which have recently appeared in the daily press to Mr. Chesterton’s Everlasting Man—a work which comes upon us as a fresh breeze from the mountain tops. It is a challenge, and a noble one, ranging from scientific theories to religious dogmas. It is quite impossible to give more than the briefest of brief outlines of its scope and treatment, and one can only hint at the faultless and fearless fathoming of flaws in the attitudes of the modern mind. But it is not until we come to the end of the book that we find, what we had all along surmised, that most of the theories attacked are popular rather than really scientific, and the author’s conscience smites him with the thought that he ‘may sometimes have given an impression of scoffing at serious scientific work.’ The book is really meant to be a popular criticism of popular fancies, often, indeed, of very vulgar errors, and it is never meant to be ‘an impertinence to the truly learned.’ So we know where we are, or, at any rate, where we have been, when we come to the Appendix.

In pointing this out we do not mean to imply that his strictures are beside the mark—in point of fact, they hit it every time, and he is inimitably accurate in detecting the weak points in many popular theories.