8/13/2019 The Short Story of Mankind

1/3

The Short Story of Mankind, by G.K. Chesterton.

In a land lit by a neighboring star, whose blaze is our daylight, there are many and very various

things motionless and moving. There moves among them one rae that is, in its relation to the

others, a rae of gods. This distintion is em!hasized, not lessened, by the fat that the rae

an sometimes behave like a rae of demons. It is demonstrated in the very s!eulations that

have led to its being denied"# It has lately been the fashion to fous the mind entirely on mild

and subordinate resemblanes whih man has to the other reatures, and to forget the main

fat altogether. $es% and that very resemblane he alone an see. The fish does not trae the

fish&bone !attern in the fowls of the air% or the ele!hant and the emu om!are skeletons. 'ven

in the sense in whih man is at one with the universe it is an utterly lonely universality. The very

sense that he is united with all things is enough to sunder him from all.

(ooking around him by this uni)ue light, as lonely as the literal flame that he alone has kindled,

this demigod or demon of the visible world makes that world visible. *e sees around him a

world of a ertain style or ty!e. It seems to !roeed by ertain rules or at least re!etitions. *e

sees a green arhiteture that builds itself without visible hands% but whih builds itself into avery e+at !lan or !attern, like a design already drawn in the air by an invisible finger. It is not a

growth or a gro!ing of blind life. 'ah seeks an end% a glorious and radiant end, even for the

ommon daisy or dandelion of the field. It is a world of rowns. This im!ression has so

!rofoundly influened this rae that the vast maority have been moved to take a ertain view of

that world. They have onluded that the world had a !lan as the tree seemed to have a !lan%

and an end and rown like the flower. -ut so long as the rae of thinkers was able to think, it

was obvious that the admission of this idea of a !lan brought with it another thought more

thrilling and even terrible. There was someone else, some strange and unseen being, who had

designed these things, if indeed they were designed. There was a stranger who was also a

friend% a mysterious benefator who had been before them and built u! the woods and hills for

their oming, and had kindled the sunrise against their rising, as a servant kindles a fire.

Most men, inluding the wisest men, have ome to the onlusion that the world has suh a

final !ur!ose and therefore suh a first ause. -ut there ame into e+istene two ways of

treating that idea, whih between them made u! most of the religious history of the world. The

maority, the mob or mass of men, naturally tended to treat it rather in the s!irit of gossi!. The

world began to tell itself tales about the unknown being or his sons or servants or messengers.

Some of the tales may truly be alled old wives tales% as !rofessing only to be very remote

memories of the morning of the world% myths about the baby moon or the half&baked mountains.

Some of them might more truly be alled travelers tales% urious but ontem!orary tales

brought from ertain borderlands of e+!eriene% suh as miraulous ures or whis!ers of what

has ha!!ened to the dead. 'nough of them are !robably true to kee! a !erson of real ommon

sense more or less onsious that there really is something rather marvelous behind the osmi

urtain. -ut at the most these gods are ghosts% that is, they are glim!ses. /or most of us they

are rather gossi! about glim!ses. 0nd for the rest, the whole world is full of rumors, most of

whih are almost avowedly romanes. The great maority of the tales about gods and ghosts

and the invisible king are told, if not for the sake of the tale, at least for the sake of the to!i.

They are evidene of the eternal interest of the theme% they are not evidene of anything else,

8/13/2019 The Short Story of Mankind

2/3

and they are not meant to be. They are mythology or the !oetry that is not bound in books1or

bound in any other way.

Meanwhile the minority, the sages or thinkers, had withdrawn a!art and had taken u! an e)ually

ongenial trade. They were drawing u! !lans of the world% of the world whih all believed to

have a !lan. They were trying to set forth the !lan seriously and to sale. They were setting their

minds diretly to the mind that had made the mysterious world% onsidering what sort of a mind

it might be and what its ultimate !ur!ose might be. Some of them made that mind muh more

im!ersonal than their own% some sim!lified it almost to a blank% a few doubted it altogether.

Some fanied that it might be evil and an enemy% ust as some in the other lass worshi!!ed

demons instead of gods. -ut most of these theorists were theists" and they not only saw a moral

!lan in nature, but they generally laid down a moral !lan for humanity. Most of them were good

men who did good work" and they were remembered and reverened in various ways. They

were sribes% and their sri!tures beame more or less holy sri!tures. They were law&givers%

and their tradition beame not only legal but eremonial. In a word, wherever the other !o!ular

s!irit, the s!irit of legend and gossi! ould ome into !lay, it surrounded them with the more

mystial atmos!here of the myths. 2o!ular !oetry turned the sages into saints. -ut that was allit did. They remained themselves% men never really forgot that they were men, only made into

gods in the sense that they were made into heroes.

3ight in the middle of all these things stands u! an enormous e+e!tion. It is )uite unlike

anything else. It is a thing as final as the trum! of doom, though it is also a !rolamation of good

news to the world% or news that seems too good to be true. It is nothing less than the loud

assertion that this mysterious maker of the world has visited his world in !erson. It delares that

really and even reently there did walk into the world that original invisible being% about whom

the thinkers make theories and the mythologists hand down myths% the Man 4ho Made the

4orld. That suh a higher !ersonality e+ists behind all things had indeed always been im!lied

by all the highest thinkers, as well as by all the most beautiful legends. -ut nothing of this sort

had ever been im!lied in any of them. 5one of the other sages and heroes had laimed to be

that mysterious master and maker, of whom the world had dreamed and dis!uted. The most

that any religious !ro!het had said was that he was the true servant of suh a being. -ut that

the Creator had talked with ta+&olletors and government offiials in the detailed daily life of the

3oman 'm!ire1that is something utterly unlike anything else in nature.

It ame on the world with a wind and rush of running messengers !rolaiming that a!oaly!ti

!ortent, and it is not unduly faniful to say that they are running still. 4hat !uzzles the world,

and its wise !hiloso!hers and faniful !oets, about the ministers and !eo!le of the Catholi

Churh is that they still behave as if they were messengers. 0 messenger does not dream about

what his message might be, or argue about what it !robably would be% he delivers it as it is. It is

not a theory or a fany but a fat. 0ll that is ondemned in Christian tradition, authority, and

dogmatism are but the natural human attributes of a man with a message relating to a fat. The

religion of the world is not divided into fine shades of mystiism or more or less rational forms of

mythology. It is divided by the line between the men who are bringing that message and the

men who have not yet heard it, or annot yet believe it. 5obody else e+e!t those messengers

has any Gos!el% nobody else has any good news% for the sim!le reason that nobody else has

8/13/2019 The Short Story of Mankind

3/3

any news. Those runners gather im!etus as they run. They have not lost the s!eed and

momentum of messengers% they have hardly lost, as it were, the wild eyes of witnesses. 4e

might sometimes fany that the Churh grows younger as the world grows old.

/or this is the last !roof of the mirale% that something so su!ernatural should have beome so

natural% that anything so uni)ue when seen from the outside should only seem universal when

seen from the inside. I have great sym!athy with the monotheists, the Moslems, or the 6ews, to

whom it seems a blas!hemy% a blas!hemy that might shake the world. -ut it did not shake the

world% it steadied the world. 2lain ustie to unbelievers should admit the audaity of the at of

faith that is demanded of them. It is, in itself, a suggestion at whih the brain of the believer

might reel, when he realized his own belief. -ut the brain of the believer does not reel% the

brains of the unbelievers are what reel. 4e an wath their brains reeling on every side% into

every e+travagane of ethis and !syhology% into !essimism and the denial of life% into

!ragmatism and the denial of logi% seeking their omens in nightmares and their anons in

ontraditions% shrieking for fear at the far&off sight of things beyond good and evil, or

whis!ering of strange stars where two and two make five. Meanwhile this solitary thing that

seems at first so outrageous in outline remains solid and sane in substane. The man who sayshe is God may at first glane be lassed with a man who says he is glass. -ut the man who

says he is glass is not a glazier making windows for all the world. *e does not remain for after

ages as a shining and rystalline figure, in whose light everything is as lear as rystal.

This is a madness whih has remained sane when everything else went mad. The madhouse

has been a house to whih, age after age, men are ontinually oming bak as to a home. I

are not if the se!ti says it is a tall story% I annot see how so to!!ling a tower ould stand so

long without foundation. Still less an I see how it ould beome, as it has beome, the home of

man. *ad it merely a!!eared and disa!!eared, it might !ossibly have been remembered or

e+!lained as the last lea! of the rage of illusion, the ultimate myth of the ultimate mood, in whih

the mind struk the sky and broke. -ut the mind did not break. It is the one mind that remains

unbroken in the break&u! of the world. It has endured for nearly two thousand years% and the

world within it has been more luid, more level&headed, more reasonable in its ho!es, more

healthy in its instints, more humorous and heerful in the fae of fate and death, than all the

world outside. /or it was the soul of Christendom that ame forth from the inredible Christ.

Though we dared not look on his fae we ould look on his fruits% and by his fruits we should

know him. The fruits are solid and the fruitfulness is muh more than a meta!hor% and nowhere

in this sad world are boys ha!!ier or men more given to reoiing under the yoke than under the

flash of this instant and intolerant enlightenment% this lightning made eternal as the (ight.