Heretics (1905)

Heretics is a collection of 20 essays by English writer G. K. Chesterton published by John Lane in 1905. In it, Chesterton quotes at length and argues extensively against atheist Joseph McCabe and delivers diatribes about his close personal friend and intellectual rival George Bernard Shaw, as well as about Friedrich Nietzsche, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and an array of other major intellectuals of his day, many of whom he knew personally. His topics 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 (1908), this book is regarded as central to Chesterton's corpus of moral theology.

Chapters

Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy

On the Negative Spirit

On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small

Mr. Bernard Shaw

Mr. H. G. Wells and the Giants

Christmas and the Esthetes

Omar and the Sacred Vine

The Mildness of the Yellow Press

The Moods of Mr. George Moore

On Sandals and Simplicity

Science and the Savages

Paganism and Mr. Lowes Dickinson

Celts and Celtophiles

On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family

On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set

On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity

On the Wit of Whistler

The Fallacy of the Young Nation

Slum Novelists and the Slums

Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy