Heretics

Heretics is a collection of 20 essays by G. K. Chesterton and published by John Lane in 1905. archaeology While the loci of the chapters of Heretics are personalities, the topics he debates are as universal to the "vague moderns" of the 21st century as they were to those of the 20th. He quotes at length and argues extensively against atheist Joseph McCabe, delivers diatribes about his close personal friend and intellectual rival, George Bernard Shaw, as well as Friedrich Nietzsche, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling and an array of other major intellectuals of his day, many of whom he knew personally. The topics he touches upon range from cosmology to anthropology to soteriology and he argues against French nihilism, German humanism, English utilitarianism, the syncretism of "the vague modern", Social Darwinism, eugenics and the arrogance and misanthropy of the European intelligentsia. Together with Orthodoxy, this book is regarded as central to his corpus of moral theology. (wikipedia.org)

Chapters

1.         Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy

2.         On the Negative Spirit

3.         On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small

4.         Mr. Bernard Shaw

5.         Mr. H. G. Wells and the Giants

6.         Christmas and the Esthetes

7.         Omar and the Sacred Vine

8.         The Mildness of the Yellow Press

9.         The Moods of Mr. George Moore

10.      On Sandals and Simplicity

11.      Science and the Savages

12.      Paganism and Mr. Lowes Dickinson

13.      Celts and Celtophiles

14.      On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family

15.      On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set

16.      On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity

17.      On the Wit of Whistler

18.      The Fallacy of the Young Nation

19.      Slum Novelists and the Slums

20.      Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy