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object:1.01 - A NOTE ON PROGRESS
book class:The Future of Man
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter



THE FUTURE
OF MAN



CHAPTER 1

A NOTE ON
PROGRESS

e pur si muove



THE conflict dates from the day when one
man, flying in the face of appearance, perceived
that the forces of nature are no more unalterably
fixed in their orbits than the stars themselves, but
that their serene arrangement around us depicts
the flow of a tremendous tide — the day on which
a first voice rang out, crying to Mankind peacefully
slumbering on the raft of Earth, "We are moving!
We are going forward!" . . .

It is a pleasant and dramatic spectacle, that
of Mankind divided to its very depths into two
irrevocably opposed camps — one looking toward
the horizon and proclaiming with all its new-
found faith, "We are moving," and the other,
without shifting its position, obstinately maintain-
ing, "Nothing changes. We are not moving at
all."

These latter, the "immobilists," though they



2 THE FUTURE OF MAN

lack passion (immobility has never inspired anyone with enthusi-
asm!) 1 , have commonsense on their side, habit of thought, inertia,
pessimism and also, to some extent, morality and religion. Nothing,
they argue, appears to have changed since man began to hand
down the memory of the past, not the undulations of the earth, or
the forms of life, or the genius of Man or even his goodness. Thus
far practical experimentation has failed to modify the fundamental
characteristics of even the most humble plant. Human suffering,
vice and war, although they may momentarily abate, recur from
age to age with an increasing virulence. Even the striving after
progress contributes to the sum of evil: to effect change is to under-
mine the painfully established traditional order whereby the dis-
tress of living creatures was reduced to a minimum. What
innovator has not retapped the springs of blood and tears? For the
sake of human tranquillity, in the name of Fact, and in defense of
the sacred Established Order, the immobilists forbid the earth to
move. Nothing changes, they say or can change. The raft must drift
purposelessly on a shoreless sea.

But the other half of mankind, startled by the lookout's cry,
has left the huddle where the rest of the crew sit with their heads
together telling time-honored tales. Gazing out over the dark sea
they study for themselves the lapping of waters along the hull of
the craft that bears them, breathe the scents borne to them on the
breeze, gaze at the shadows cast from pole to pole by a changeless
eternity. And for these all things, while remaining separately the
same — the ripple of water, the scent of the air, the lights in the
sky — become linked together and acquire a new sense: the fixed
and random Universe is seen to move.

1 For the status quo of life as it exists: the "immobility" of the Christian, or of
the Stoic, may arouse fervor because it is a withdrawal, that is to say an individ-
ual anticipation (more or less fictitious) of consummated progress.


A NOTE ON PROGRESS 3

No one in the world who has seen this vision can be restrained
from guarding and proclaiming it. 7b testify to my faith in it, and to
show reasons, is my purpose here.


it is CLEAR in the first place that the world in its present state is
the outcome of movement. Whether we consider the position of
the rocky layers enveloping the Earth, the arrangement of the
forms of life that inhabit it, the variety of civilizations to which it
has given birth, or the structure of languages spoken upon it, we
are forced to the same conclusion: that everything is the sum of the
past and that nothing is comprehensible except through its history.
"Nature" is the equivalent of "becoming," self-creation: this is the
view to which experience irresistibly leads us. What can it mean
except that the Universe must, at least at some stage, have been in
movement; that it has been malleable, acquiring by degrees, not
only in their accidental details but in their very essence, the per-
fections which now adorn it? There is nothing, not even the human
soul, the highest spiritual manifestation we know of, that does not
come within this universal law. The soul, too, has its clearly defined
place in the slow ascent of living creatures toward consciousness,
and must therefore in one way or another have grown out of the
general mobility of things. Those who look reality in the face can-
not fail to perceive this progressive genesis of the Universe, and
with a clarity which leaves no room for doubt. Whatever the other
side may say, clinging to their imaginary world, the Cosmos did
once move, the whole of it, not only locally but in its very being.
This is undeniable and we shall not discuss it further. But is it still
moving? Here we have the real question, the living, burning ques-
tion of Evolution.



THE FUTURE OF MAN



it is the fundamental paradox of Nature as we see it now that
its universal plasticity seems suddenly to have hardened. Like an
ocean-wave caught in a snapshot, or a torrent of lava stiffened by
cooling, the mountains and living things of the earth wear the as-
pect, to those who study them, of a powerful momentum that has
become petrified. Nature seen at a distance appears to be mal-
leable and in motion; but seek to lay hands on it, to deflect by force
even the least of Life's directions, and you will encounter nothing
but absolute rigidity, an unshakably stubborn refusal to depart
from the preordained path.

But let us note that this present rigidity of Nature does not, as
some people believe, in any way lessen the certainty of its past mo-
bility. What we regard as the fixity of present organisms may be
simply a state of very slow movement, or of rest between spells of
movement. It is true that we have not yet succeeded in shaping life
to our requirements in the laboratory; but who has shaped or wit-
nessed the shaping of a geological stratum? The rock which we
seek to compress crumbles because we work too fast or with over-
small fragments. Calcareous matter, if it is to be made malleable,
needs to be embedded in a vast mass, and perhaps its reshaping is
a process of immense slowness. If we have not seen the upward
thrust of mountain ranges it is because their rise was accomplished
either in widely spaced jerks or with so slow a rhythm that since the
coming of Man nothing of the kind has happened, or at least
nothing that has been perceptible to us. Why should not Life, too,
be mobile only in great masses, or through the slow action of time,
or in brief stages? Who can positively affirm that at this moment,
although we perceive nothing, new forms are not taking shape in
the contours of the earth and of Life? . . .



A NOTE ON PROGRESS 5

The plasticity of Nature in the past is an undeniable fact; its
present rigidity is less capable of scientific proof. If we had to
choose between transformism and fixism, that is to say between
two absolutes — everything incestantly in motion, or everything for
ever immovable — we should be bound to choose the first. But
there is a third possible hypothesis, namely that everything was at
one time fluid but is now irrevocably fixed. It is this third alternative
that I wish to examine and dismiss.


the hypothesis OF a definitive halt in terrestrial evolution is,
to my mind, suggested less by the apparently unchanging nature of
present forms than by a certain general aspect of the world coin-
ciding with this appearance of cessation. It is most striking that the
morphological change of living creatures seems to have slowed
down at the precise moment when Thought appeared on earth. If
we relate this coincidence to the fact that the only general line
taken by biological evolution has been in the direction of the
largest brain — broadly speaking, of the highest state of conscious-
ness — we are compelled to wonder whether the true fundamental
impulse underlying the growth of animal forces has not been the
"need" to know and to think; and whether, when this overriding
impulse eventually found its outlet in the human species, the effect
was not to produce an abrupt diminution of "vital pressure" in the
other branches of the Tree of Life. This would explain the fact
that "evolving Life," from the end of the Tertiary era, has been
confined to the little group of higher primates. We know of many
forms that have disappeared since the Oligocene, but of no gen-
uinely new species other than the anthropoids. This again may be
explained by the extreme brevity of the Miocene as compared



6 THE FUTURE OF MAN

with other geological periods. But does it not lead us to surmise
that the "phyla" possessing higher psychic attributes have absorbed
all the forces at Life's disposal?

If we are to find a definitive answer to the question of the en-
titative progress of the Universe we must do so by adopting the
least favourable position — that is to say by envisaging a world
whose evolutionary capacity is concentrated upon and confined to the hu-
man soul The question of whether the Universe is still developing
then becomes a matter of deciding whether the human spirit is still
in process of evolution. To this I reply unhesitatingly "Yes, it is."
The nature of Man is in the full flood of entitative change. But to
grasp this it is necessary (a) not to overlook the biological (mor-
phogeny) value of moral action, and (b) to accept the organic na-
ture of interindividual relationships. We shall then see that a vast
evolutionary process is in ceaseless operation around us, but that it
is situated within the sphere of consciousness (and collective con-
sciousness).



what is THE difference between ourselves, citizens of the twen-
tieth century, and the earliest human beings whose soul is not en-
tirely hidden from us? In what respects may we consider ourselves
their superiors and more advanced than they?

Organically speaking, the faculties of those remote forebears
were probably the equal of our own. By the middle of the last Ice
Age, at the latest, some human groups had attained to the expres-
sion of aesthetic powers calling for intelligence and sensibility de-
veloped to a point which we have not surpassed. To all appearance
the ultimate perfection of the human element was achieved many
thousands of years ago, which is to say that the individual instru-



A NOTE ON PROGRESS 7

ment of thought and action may be considered to have been final-
ized. But there is fortunately another dimension in which variation
is still possible, and in which we continue to evolve.

The great superiority over Primitive Man which we have
acquired and which will be enhanced by our descendants in a
degree perhaps undreamed-of by ourselves, is in the realm of self-
knowledge: in our growing capacity to situate ourselves in space and
time, to the point of becoming conscious of our place and responsi-
bility in relation to the Universe.

Surmounting in turn the illusions of terrestrial flatness, immo-
bility and autocentricity, we have taken the unhopeful surface of
the earth and "rolled it like a little ball 55 ; we have set it on a course
among the stars; we have grasped the fact that it is no more than a
grain of cosmic dust; and we have discovered that a process with-
out limit has brought into being the realms of substance and
essence. Our fathers supposed themselves to go back no further
than yesterday, each man containing within himself the ultimate
value of his existence. They held themselves to be confined within
the limits of their years on earth and their corporeal frame. We
have blown asunder this narrow compass and those beliefs. At
once humbled and ennobled by our discoveries, we are gradually
coming to see ourselves as a part of vast and continuing processes;
as though awakening from a dream, we are beginning to realize
that our nobility consists in serving, like intelligent atoms, the work
proceeding in the Universe. We have discovered that there is a
Whole, of which we are the elements. We have found the world in
our own souls.

What does this conquest signify? Does it merely denote the es-
tablishment, in worldly terms, of an idealized system of logical, ex-
trinsic relationships? Is it no more than an intellectual luxury, as is
commonly supposed — the mere satisfaction of curiosity? No. The



8 THE FUTURE OF MAN

consciousness which we are gradually acquiring of our physical re-
lationship with all parts of the Universe represents a genuine en-
larging of our separate personalities. It is truly a progressive
realization of the universality of the things surrounding each of us.
And it means that in the domain external to our flesh our real and
whole body is continuing to take shape.

That is in no way a "sentimental" affirmation.

The proof that the growing coextension of our soul and the
world, through the consciousness of our relationship with all things,
is not simply a matter of logic or idealization, but is part of an or-
ganic process, the natural outcome of the impulse which caused
the germination of life and the growth of the brain — the proof is
that it expresses itself in a specific evolution of the moral value of our ac-
tions (that is to say, by the modification of what is most living within
us).

No doubt it is true that the scope of individual human action,
as commonly envisaged in the abstract theory of moral and meri-
torious acts, is not greatly enhanced by the growth of human
knowledge. Inasmuch as the willpower of contemporary man is
not in itself more vigorous or unswerving than that of a Plato or
an Augustine, and individual moral perfection is still to be mea-
sured by steadfastness in pursuance of the known good (and there-
fore relative) we cannot claim as individuals to be more moral or
saintly than our fathers.

Yet this must be said, to our own honor and that of those who
have toiled to make us what we are: that between the behavior of
men in the first century a.d. and our own, the difference is as great,
or greater, than that between the behavior of a fifteen-year-old boy
and a man of forty. Why is this so? Because, owing to the progress
of science and of thought, our actions today, whether for good or
ill, proceed from an incomparably higher point of departure than



A NOTE ON PROGRESS 9

those of the men who paved the way for us toward enlightenment.
When Plato acted it was probably in the belief that his freedom to
act could only affect a small fragment of the world, narrowly cir-
cumscribed in space and time; but the man of today acts in the
knowledge that the choice he makes will have its repercussions
through countless centuries and upon countless human beings. He
feels in himself the responsibilities and the power of an entire Universe.
Progress has not caused the action of Man (Man himself) to change
in each separate individual; but because of it the action of human na-
ture (Mankind) has acquired, in every thinking man, a fullness that
is wholly new Moreover, how are we to compare or contrast our
acts with those of Plato or Augustine? All such acts are linked, and
Plato and Augustine are still expressing, through me, the whole ex-
tent of their personalities. There is a kind of human action that
gradually matures through a multitude of human acts. The human
monad has long been constituted. What is now proceeding is the
animation (assimilation) of the Universe by that monad; that is to
say, the realization of a consummated human Thought.

There are philosophers who, accepting this progressive anima-
tion of the concrete by the power of thought, of Matter by Spirit,
seek to build upon it the hope of a terrestrial liberation, as though
the soul, become mistress of all determinisms and inertias, may
someday be capable of overcoming harsh probability and van-
quishing suffering and evil here on earth. Alas, it is a forlorn hope;
for it seems certain that any outward upheaval or internal renova-
tion which might suffice to transform the Universe as it is could
only be a kind of death — death of the individual, death of the
race, death of the Cosmos. A more realistic and more Christian
view shows us Earth evolving toward a state in which Man, having
come into the full possession of his sphere of action, his strength,
his maturity and his unity, will at last have become an adult being;



10 THE FUTURE OF MAN

and having reached this apogee of his responsibility and freedom,
holding in his hands all his future and all his past, will make the
choice between arrogant autonomy and loving excentration.

This will be the final choice: whether a world is to revolt or to
adore. 2 And then, on an act which will summarize the toil of cen-
turies, on this act (finally and for the first time completely human)
justice will set its seal and all things be renewed.



the truth can now be seen: Progress is not what the popular
mind looks for, finding with exasperation that it never comes.
Progress is not immediate ease, well-being and peace. It is not rest.
It is not even, directly, virtue. Essentially Progress is a force, and the
most dangerous of forces. It is the Consciousness of all that is and
all that can be. Though it may encounter every kind of prejudice
and resentment, this must be asserted because it is the true: to be
more is in the first place to know more.

Hence the mysterious attraction which, regardless of all set-
backs and a priori condemnations, has drawn men irresistibly
toward science as to the source of Life. Stronger than every obsta-
cle and counterargument is the instinct which tells us that, to be
faithful to Life, we must know; we must know more and still more;
we must tirelessly and unceasingly search for Something, we know
not what, which will appear in the end to those who have pene-
trated to the very heart of reality.

I maintain that it is possible, by following this road, to find sub-
stantial reasons for belief in Progress.

2 My purpose is not to show that a necessary or infallible line of progress exists,
but simply to establish that, for Mankind as a whole, a way of progress is offered
and awaits us, analogous to that which the individual cannot reject without
falling into sin and damnation.



A NOTE ON PROGRESS 11

The world of human thought today presents a very remark-
able spectacle, if we choose to take note of it. Joined in an inex-
plicable unifying movement men who are utterly opposed in
education and in faith find themselves brought together, intermin-
gled, in their common passion for a double truth; namely, that
there exists a physical Unity of beings, and that they themselves
are living and active parts of it. It is as though a new and formi-
dable mountain chain had arisen in the landscape of the soul,
causing ancient categories to be reshuffled and uniting higgledy-
piggledy on every slope the friends and enemies of yesterday: on
one side the inflexible and sterile vision of a Universe composed of
unalterable, juxtaposed parts, and on the other side the ardor, the
faith, the contagion of a living truth emerging from all action and
exercise of will. Here we have a group of men joined simply by the
weight of the past and their resolve to defend it; there a gathering
of neophytes confident of their truth and strong in their mutual
understanding, which they feel to be final and complete.

There seem to be only two kinds of mind left; and — it is a dis-
turbing thought — all natural mystical power and all human reli-
gious impulse seem to be concentrated on one side. What does this



mean. H



-?



There are people who will claim that it is no more than a
mode, a momentary ripple of the spirit — at the most the passing
exaggeration of a force that has always contributed to the balance
of human thinking. But I believe we must look for something more.
This impulse which in our time is so irresistibly attracting all open
minds toward a philosophy that comprises at once a theoretical
system, a rule of action, a religion and a presentiment, heralds and
denotes, in my view, the effective, physical fulfillment of all living
beings.

We have said that progress is designed to enable considered ac-
tion to proceed from the willpower of mankind, a wholly human



12 THE FUTURE OF MAN

exercise of choice. But this natural conclusion of the vital effort, as
we can now see, is not to be regarded as something consummated
separately in the secret heart of each monad. If we are to perceive
and measure the extent of Progress we must look resolutely beyond
the individual viewpoint. It is Mankind as a whole, collective hu-
manity, which is called upon to perform the definitive act whereby
the total force of terrestrial evolution will be released and flourish;
an act in which the full consciousness of each individual man will
be sustained by that of every other man, not only the living but the
dead. And so it follows that the opus humanum laboriously and grad-
ually achieved within us by the growth of knowledge and in the
face of evil, is something quite other than an act of higher moral-
ity: it is a living organism. We cannot distinctly view its progress
because the organism encloses us, and to know a thing syntheti-
cally one has to be able to see it as a whole. Yet is there any part of
ourselves which does not glow and responsively vibrate with the
measure of our growth?

We need only to look about us at the multitude of disjointed
forces neutralizing each other and losing themselves in the confu-
sion of human society — the huge realities (broad currents of love
or hatred animating people and classes) which represent conscious-
ness in potency but have not yet found a consciousness sufficiently
vast to encompass them all. We need only recall those moments in
time of war when, wrested out of ourselves by the force of a col-
lective passion, we have a sense of rising to a higher level of hu-
man existence. All these spiritual reserves, guessed at and faintly
apprehended, what are they but the sure evidence that creation is
still on the move, but that we are not yet capable of expressing all
the natural grandeur of the human mission?

Vistas such as these, I know, do not appear to come within the
Christian perspective; and because of this most of those who point



A NOTE ON PROGRESS 13

to them and welcome them seem, at least by implication, to be
heralding the appearance of a religion destined to supplant all ear-
lier creeds. But how does it all arise — the challenge on the one
hand, and the mistrust on the other — except out of the fact that
neither we nor our adversaries have sufficiently measured the
powers of growth with which Christ endowed his Church?

For my own part I accept the reality of the movement which
tends to segregate, within the bosom of Mankind, a congregation
of the faithful dedicated to the great task, "Advance in unity!"
Moreover, I believe in its truth; I consider the fact that it contains
in its ranks a great number of sinners, of "the maimed, and the
halt, and the blind," to be evidence of this truth. But this does not
cause me to believe that the eager multitude crying out today for
guidance is in search of any Shepherd other than He who has al-
ready brought it bread.

Christ, as we know, fulfills Himself gradually, 3 through the
ages in the sum of our individual endeavors. Why should we treat
this fulfillment as though it possessed none but a metaphorical
significance, confining it entirely within the abstract domain of
purely supernatural action? Without the process of biological evo-
lution, which produced the human brain, there would be no sanc-
tified souls; and similarly, without the evolution of collective
thought, through which alone the plenitude of human conscious-
ness can be attained on earth, how can there be a consummated
Christ? In other words, without the constant striving of every hu-
man cell to unite with all the others, would the Parousia be physi-
cally possible? I doubt it.

That is why I believe that this coming together, from all four
corners of the intellectual world, of a great mass of naturally reli-

3 In his Mystical Body: cf. the last paragraph of Cosmic Life, p. 307. (Ed.).



14 THE FUTURE OF MAN

gious spirits, does not portend the building of a new temple on the
ruins of all others but the laying of new foundations to which the
old Church is gradually being moved.

Little by little the idea is coming to light in Christian con-
sciousness that the "phylogenesis" of the whole man, and not
merely the "ontogenesis" of his moral virtues, is hallowed, in the
sense that the charity of the believer may more resemble an im-
pulse of constructive energy and his self-detachment be more in
the nature of a positive effort.

In response to the cry of a world trembling with the desire for
unity, and already equipped, through the workings of material
progress, with the external links of this unity, Christ is already re-
vealing himself, in the depths of men's hearts, as the Shepherd (the
Animator) of the Universe. We may indeed believe that the time is
approaching when many men, old and new believers, having un-
derstood that from the depths of Matter to the highest peak of the
Spirit there is only one evolution, will seek the fullness of their
strength and their peace in the assured certainty that the whole of
the world's industrial, aesthetic, scientific and moral endeavor
serves physically to complete the Body of Christ, whose charity an-
imates and re-creates all things.

Fulfilling the profound need for unity which pervades the
world, and crowning it with renewed faith in Christ the Physical
Center of Creation; finding in this need the natural energy re-
quired for the renewal of the world's life; thus do I see the New
Jerusalem, descending from Heaven and rising from the Earth.



He who speaks these words before the Tribunal of the Elders will
be laughed at and dismissed as a dreamer.



A NOTE ON PROGRESS 15

"Nothing moves," a first Sage will say. "The eye of common
sense sees it and science confirms it."

"Philosophy shows that nothing can move," says a second.

"Religion forbids it — nothing must move," says a third.

Disregarding this triple verdict the Seer leaves the public place
and returns to the firm, deep bosom of Nature. Gazing into the
depths of the immense complex of which he is a part, whose roots
extend far below him to be lost in the obscurity of the past, he
again fortifies his spirit with the contemplation and the feeling of a
universal, stubborn movement depicted in the successive layers of
dead matter and the present spread of the living. Gazing upward,
toward the space held in readiness for new creation, he dedicates
himself body and soul, with faith reaffirmed, to a Progress which
will bear with it or else sweep away all those who will not hear. His
whole being seized with religious fervor he looks toward a Christ
already risen but still unimaginably great, invoking, in the supreme
homage of faith and adoration, "Deo Ignoto"

HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED. PARIS, AUGUST lO, 1Q20.



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