Chesterton demonstrates in The Everlasting Man, a funny defence of Christianity that inspired C.S. Lewis, that once man is reduced to animal, history loses all meaning. The fact that man is so distinct from the creatures is what genuinely gives him dignity. What distinguishes Christianity is that it presents the story of the true man, the last man, the everlasting man, who came down through history and changed it. “This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave . . . It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces. And it was here beneath the very feet of the passers-by, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born.” ~ From The Everlasting Man
