Heretics

By G. K. Chesterton For a work of philosophical criticism, Heretics concludes on a surprising note: “There are no rationalists,” G. K. Chesterton declares. “We all believe fairy-tales and live in them.” Like so many things Chestertonian, the remark appears fanciful, but is in fact mortally serious. The foundation for this remark in particular is the series of essays which constitutes Heretics: investigations of men whose viewpoints and doctrines have “the hardihood to differ” from Chesterton’s. With all the ebullience and brashness typical of its author, Heretics contends with such giants of twentieth-century thought as Joseph McCabe and Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, and Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Darwin, and their ideological progeny—atheism, militarism, vitalism (the philosophy of the “life force”), scientism, nihilism, and evolutionism—and the expansive effects of their power and influence. Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thu