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 ra e that is, in its relation to the others, a ra e of gods. This distin tion is em!hasized, not lessened, by the fa t that the ra e an sometimes behave like a ra e of demons. It is demonstrated in the very s!e ulations that have led to its being denied"# It has lately been the fashion to fo us the mind entirely on mild and subordinate resemblan es whi h man has to the other reatures, and to forget the main fa t altogether. $es% and that very resemblan e he alone an see. The fish does not tra e 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 whi h 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 !ro eed by ertain rules or at least re!etitions. *e sees a green ar hite ture that builds itself without visible hands% but whi h builds itself into a very e+a t !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. 'a h 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 influen ed this ra e that the vast ma,ority have been moved to take a ertain view of that world. They have on luded 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 ra e 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 benefa tor 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, in luding the wisest men, have ome to the on lusion that the world has su h a final !ur!ose and therefore su h a first ause. -ut there ame into e+isten e two ways of treating that idea, whi h between them made u! most of the religious history of the world. The ma,ority, 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+!erien e% su h as mira ulous 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 ons ious 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 whi h are almost avowedly roman es. The great ma,ority 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 eviden e of the eternal interest of the theme% they are not eviden e of anything else,

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 whi h all believed to have a !lan. They were trying to set forth the !lan seriously and to s ale. They were setting their minds dire tly 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 mu h more im!ersonal than their own% some sim!lified it almost to a blank% a few doubted it altogether. Some fan ied 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 reveren ed in various ways. They were s ribes% and their s ri!tures be ame more or less holy s ri!tures. They were law&givers% and their tradition be ame 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 mysti al atmos!here of the myths. 2o!ular !oetry turned the sages into saints. -ut that was all it 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 !ro lamation 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 de lares that really and even re ently 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 su h 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 su h a being. -ut that the Creator had talked with ta+& olle tors and government offi ials 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 !ro laiming that a!o aly!ti !ortent, and it is not unduly fan iful to say that they are running still. 4hat !uzzles the world, and its wise !hiloso!hers and fan iful !oets, about the ministers and !eo!le of the Catholi Chur h 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 fan y but a fa t. 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 fa t. The religion of the world is not divided into fine shades of mysti ism 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

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 fan y that the Chur h grows younger as the world grows old. /or this is the last !roof of the mira le% that something so su!ernatural should have be ome 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 ,usti e to unbelievers should admit the auda ity of the a t of faith that is demanded of them. It is, in itself, a suggestion at whi h 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 wat h their brains reeling on every side% into every e+travagan e of ethi s and !sy hology% into !essimism and the denial of life% into !ragmatism and the denial of logi % seeking their omens in nightmares and their anons in ontradi tions% 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 substan e. The man who says he is God may at first glan e 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 whi h has remained sane when everything else went mad. The madhouse has been a house to whi h, age after age, men are ontinually oming ba k as to a home. I are not if the s e!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 be ome, as it has be ome, 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 whi h the mind stru k 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 lu id, more level&headed, more reasonable in its ho!es, more healthy in its instin ts, more humorous and heerful in the fa e of fate and death, than all the world outside. /or it was the soul of Christendom that ame forth from the in redible Christ. Though we dared not look on his fa e we ould look on his fruits% and by his fruits we should know him. The fruits are solid and the fruitfulness is mu h more than a meta!hor% and nowhere in this sad world are boys ha!!ier or men more given to re,oi ing under the yoke than under the flash of this instant and intolerant enlightenment% this lightning made eternal as the (ight.