Prefatory Note
Introduction: The Plan of This Book
PART I: ON THE CREATURE CALLED MAN
I The Man in the Cave
II Professors and Prehistoric Men
III The Antiquity of Civilisation
IV God and Comparative Religion
V Man and Mythologies
VI Demons and Philosophers
VII The War of the Gods and Demons
VIII The End of the World
PART II: ON THE MAN CALLED CHRIST
I The God in the Cave
II The Riddles of the Gospel
III The Strangest Story in the World
IV The Witness of the Heretics
V The Escape from Paganism
VI The Five Deaths of the Faith
CONCLUSION: THE SUMMARY OF THIS BOOK
Appendix I. On Prehistoric Man
Appendix II. On Authority and Accuracy
* * *
PREPATORY NOTE
This book needs a preliminary note that its scope be not misunderstood
The view suggested is historical rather than theological,
and does not deal directly with a religious change which has been
the chief event of my own life; and about which I am already
writing a more purely controversial volume. It is impossible,
I hope, for any Catholic to write any book on any subject,
above all this subject, without showing that he is a Catholic;
but this study is not specially concerned with the differences
between a Catholic and a Protestant. Much of it is devoted
to many sorts of Pagans rather than any sort of Christians;
and its thesis is that those who say that Christ stands side
by side with similar myths, and his religion side by side
with similar religions, are only repeating a very stale formula
contradicted by a very striking fact. To suggest this I
have not needed to go much beyond matters known to us all;
I make no claim to learning; and have to depend for some things,
as has rather become the fashion, on those who are more learned.
As I have more than once differed from Mr. H. G. Wells in his view
of history, it is the more right that I should here congratulate
him on the courage and constructive imagination which carried
through his vast and varied and intensely interesting work;
but still more on having asserted the reasonable right of the amateur
to do what he can with the facts which the specialists provide.
