Heretics (book)

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

 * 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