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Heretics G.K. Chesterton "The human race, according to religion, fell once, and in falling gained knowledge of good and evil. Now we have fallen a second time, and only the knowledge of evil remains to us," G.K. Chesterton. Heretics (1905) With his usual elegance, Chesterton writes about a new author or thinker in each chapter. The chapter on H.G. Wells is as memorable as that of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of Oscar Wilde, Chesterton pronounces: "The same lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure seeker] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion, but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may, its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw." Orthodoxy (1908) A companion book to Heretics, Chesterton says that the purpose of his book is to "attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it."