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object:1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS
book class:The Future of Man
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter


CHAPTER 4

SOME REFLECTIONS
ON PROGRESS

PART I. THE FUTURE OF MAN SEEN
BY A PALEONTOLOGIST



Introduction

when little more than a century ago, Man
first discovered the abyss of time that lies behind
him, and therefore the abyss that lies ahead,
his first feeling was a tremendous hope, a sense
of wonderment at the progress our fathers had
made.

But now the wind seems to have changed. Fol-
lowing many setbacks a wave of troubled scepti-
cism (adorned with the name of "realism") is
sweeping through the world. Whether from immo-
bilist reaction, sick pessimism or simply pose, it has
become "good form" to deride or mistrust any-
thing that looks like faith in the future.

"Have we ever moved? Are we still moving?
And if so, are we going forward or back or simply
in a circle?"

This is an attitude of doubt that will prove fa-



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 53

tal if we do not take care, because in destroying the love of life it
also destroys the life-force of Mankind.

I wish to show in this paper that, however bitter our disillu-
sionment with human goodness in recent years, there are stronger
scientific reasons than ever before for believing that we do really
progress and that we can advance much further still, provided we
are clear about the direction in which progress lies and are resolved
to take the right road.



7. Preliminary Observations: The Slow Movements

TO UNDERSTAND WHAT follows we must first thoroughly assim-
ilate the idea that there are movements in the Universe so slow that
we cannot directly detect them. The idea of slow movement is in
itself very simple and commonplace — we have all looked at the
hour-hand of a watch. But it took us a long time to realize that the
more stable and immobile a given object in Nature may appear to
be, the greater is the likelihood that it represents a profound and
majestic process of movement. We know now that the vast system
of stars in our own sky is composed of a single nebula, the Milky
Way, in course of granulation and deployment; and that this neb-
ula, in association with millions of other spiral units, forms a sin-
gle, immense supersystem which is also in process of expansion
and organization. We know that the continents tremble and that
the mountains continue to rise beneath our feet . . . and so on.

It can be said that Science today progresses only by peeling
away, one after another, all the coverings of apparent stability in
the world; disclosing beneath the immobility of the infinitely small,
movement of extra rapidity, and beneath the immobility of the
Immense, movement of extra slowness.



54 THE FUTURE OF MAN

We are concerned here with the second of these effects, which
may be expressed as follows: everything in the Universe moves; but
the larger a thing is, the slower is its movement



2. The Case of Life

this being posited let us leave the nebulae and the moun-
tains and turn to Life itself, of which Mankind is a fragment.

Life, by our timescale, is a phenomenon of prodigious age —
over 300 million years. Moreover it is composed of myriads of
separate elements and it covers the earth. In terms of space-time
Life comes in the category of immensely large things. It is part of
the Immense, and if it moves at all it moves like the Immense.

Our object is to determine whether Life and Mankind move.
We can only find out by observing them (like the hour-hand of our
watch) over a very great length of time. Here it is that we see the part
played by paleontology, as well as the secret vice of our critics.



3. The Role of Paleontology

it might seem that paleontology is a science of pure specula-
tion or inquisitiveness, and the paleontologist the most unreal and
useless of researchers; a man dedicated to retrospection, plunged
living into the past, where he spends his days collecting the debris
of all kinds of dead things. That is certainly what many laymen
think, and it may well be the view humbly taken by many paleon-
tologists of themselves.

But in this the instinct that prompts our work sees more clearly
than reason. The reconstruction of "that which was" may ration-
ally appear to be merely a fantasy for idle minds; but in fact the



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 55

meticulous work accomplished in the past hundred years by the
collectors of fossils, the results which they have patiently recorded
in innumerable papers and in barbarous language, perfectly in-
comprehensible to non-initiates, the paraphernalia of systematized
knowledge and the clutter on the museum shelves, all this has
made a contribution of the utmost importance to the world's
thinking. It has added to the sum of human knowledge an item of
extraordinary interest — a segment of the past extending over some 300
million years.

Do we fully realize its value?

We are trying, let me repeat, for vital reasons to determine
whether the world, Mankind, is the seat of any kind of progress. Let
us put aside all metaphysical speculation, all sentimental impressions
and arguments. We are dealing with a question of fact and we must
look at the facts. If we confine ourselves to short periods of time on
which progress makes no mark our argument will drag on and get
nowhere. But if we contemplate a depth of time such as this one that
we have been able to reconstruct in the laboratory, any movement of
Life, if such exists, must of necessity show itself.

Instead of arguing fruitlessly within the overbrief space of a
few generations, let us look at the broad vista which science offers
us. What do we see?



A. The Growth of Consciousness

FOR VARIOUS psychological and technical reasons which I
need not examine here, the reading or decipherment of the tract of
time disclosed by paleontology is still not free of difficulty. Indeed it
continues to be a matter of vehement dispute. The interpretation
which I am about to put forward must therefore not be regarded as
"accepted." Nevertheless it seems to me so self-evident that I have



56 THE FUTURE OF MAN

no hesitation in offering it as the correct interpretation and the one
destined sooner or later to win general scientific agreement.

It may be stated thus: when observed through a sufficient
depth of time (millions of years) Life can be seen to move. Not
only does it move but it advances in a definite direction. And not
only does it advance, but in observing its progress we can discern
the process or practical mechanism whereby it does so.

These are three propositions which may be briefly developed
as follows.

a Life moves. This calls for no demonstration. Everyone in
these days knows how greatly all living forms have changed if we
compare two moments in the earth's history sufficiently separated
in time. In any period of ten million years Life practically grows a
new skin.

b In a definite direction. This is the crucial point which has to be
clearly understood. While accepting the undeniable fact of the
general evolution of Life in the course of time, many biologists still
maintain that these changes take place without following any de-
fined course, in any direction and at random. This contention, dis-
astrous to any idea of progress, is refuted, in my view, by the
tremendous fact of the continuing "cerebralization" of living crea-
tures. Research shows that from the lowest to the highest level of
the organic world there is a persistent and clearly defined thrust of
animal forms toward species with more sensitive and elaborate
nervous systems. A growing "innervation" and "cephalization" of
organisms: the working of this law is visible in every living group
known to us, the smallest no less than the largest. We can follow it
in insects as in vertebrates; and among the vertebrates we can fol-
low it from class to class, from order to order, and from family to



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 57

family. There is an amphibian phase of the brain, a reptilian
phase, a mammalian phase. In mammals we see the brain grow as
time passes and become more complex among the ungulates, the
carnivores and above all the primates. So much so that one could
draw a steadily rising Curve of Life taking Time as one coordinate
and, as the other, the quantity (and quality) of nervous tissue exist-
ing on earth at each geological stage.

What else can this mean except that, as shown by the develop-
ment of nervous systems, there is a continual heightening, a rising
tide of consciousness which visibly manifests itself on our planet in
the course of the ages?

c We come to the third point. What is the underlying process
whose existence we can perceive in this continual heightening of
consciousness, as revealed by the organic evolution of the nervous
system and the brain? Let us look more closely in the light of the
latest data supplied by the combined ingenuity of an army of re-
search workers. As we are beginning to realize, there are probably
tens of thousands of atoms grouped in a single virus molecule.
There are certainly tens of thousands of molecules grouped in a
single cell. There are millions of brains in a single ant hill. . . .

What does this atomism signify except that Cosmic Matter, gov-
erned at its lower end (as we already know) by forces of dispersal
which slowly cause it to dissolve into atoms, now shows itself to be
subjected, at the other end, to an extraordinary power of enforced
coalescence, of which the outcome is the emergence, pari passu, of
an ever-increasing amount of spiritual energy in matter that is ever
more powerfully synthesized? Let me note that there is nothing
metaphysical in this. I am not seeking to define either Spirit or Mat-
ter. I am simply saying, without leaving the physical field, that the
greatest discovery made in this century is probably the realization



58 THE FUTURE OF MAN

that the passage of Time may best be measured by the gradual
gathering of Matter in superposed groups, of which the arrange-
ment, ever richer and more centralized, radiates outward from an
ever more luminous fringe of liberty and interiority. The phenom-
enon of growing consciousness on earth, in short, is directly due to
the increasingly advanced organization of more and more compli-
cated elements, successively created by the working of chemistry
and of Life. At the present time I can see no more satisfactory so-
lution of the enigma presented to us by the physical progress of the
Universe.



5. The Place of Man in the Forefront of Life

IN what I have said thus far I have been looking at Life in gen-
eral, in its entirety. We come now to the particular case which in-
terests us most — the problem of Man.

The existence of an ascendant movement in the Universe has
been revealed to us by the study of paleontology. Where is Man to
be situated in this line of progress?

The answer is clear. If, as I maintain, the movement of the cos-
mos toward the highest degree of consciousness is not an optical il-
lusion, but represents the essence of biological evolution, then, in
the curve traced by Life, Man is unquestionably situated at the
topmost point; and it is he, by his emergence and existence, who
finally proves the reality and defines the direction of the tra-
jectory — "the dot on the i". . . .

Indeed, within the field accessible to our experience, does not
the birth of Thought stand out as a critical point through which all
the striving of previous ages passes and is consummated — the crit-
ical point traversed by consciousness, when, by force of concentra-
tion, it ends by reflecting upon itself?



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 59

Prior to Galileo, science thought of Man as the mathematical
and moral center of a World composed of spheres turning stati-
cally upon themselves. But in terms of our modern neoanthro-
pocentricity, Man, both diminished and enlarged, becomes the
head (terrestrial) of a Universe that is in the process of psychic
transformation — Man, the last-formed, most complex and most
conscious of "molecules." From which it follows that, borne on the
tide of millions of years of psychogenesis, we have the right to con-
sider ourselves the fruit of a progression — the children of progress.

The world did at least progress to the point where the firstborn
of our race appeared. Here we have a fixed and solid point on
which to base our philosophy of life.

Let us now take a further step.

We may agree that zoological evolution culminated in Man.
But having reached this peak did it come to a stop? Life continued
to move until Thought entered the world, this we may admit. But
has it advanced since then? Can it make any further progress?



6. The Movement of Mankind upon Itself

ancient though prehistory may make it seem to our
eyes, Mankind is still very young. We can trace its existence for not
much more than a hundred thousand years, a period so short that
it has left no mark on the majority of the animal forms that pre-
ceded us on the earth and which still surround us. It may seem im-
possible, and it is certainly a very delicate matter, to measure any
movement of Life in so slender a fragment of the past. Neverthe-
less, owing to the exceptionally rapid development which is a char-
acteristic of the human wave, a direct assessment of the advance
of our own group in terms of consciousness is possible to the prac-
ticed eye, even within this limited tract of time.



60 THE FUTURE OF MAN

a It seems in the first place that, anatomically, a gradual evo-
lution of the brain can be discerned during the earliest phases of
our phylogenesis. Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus possessed in-
telligence, but there are solid grounds for supposing that they were
not cerebrally as well developed as ourselves.

b We may accept that the human brain reached the limit of
its development at the stage which anthropologists call Homo sapi-
ens; or at least, if it has continued to develop since then, that the
change cannot be detected by our present methods of observation.
But although, since the Age of the Reindeer (that is to say, within
a period of twenty or thirty thousand years) no progress is percep-
tible in either the physical or the mental faculties of Individual
Man, the fact of organopsychic development seems to be clearly
manifest in Collective Man: and this, whatever we may think of it,
represents as true an advance as the acquisition of an added con-
volution by the brain.

Let me here repeat the two fundamental equations or equiva-
lents which we have established:

Progress = growth of consciousness.

Growth of Consciousness = effect of organization.

Taken together these mean that, in order to discover or verify the
existence of biological progress within a given system, we have
only to observe, for the period of time and the field we are consid-
ering, how far the state of organization varies within that system.
This being posited we may compare the world of the cave
dweller with the world of today. Setting all theory aside there can
be no question but that, within this period of thirty thousand years,
Mankind has advanced almost unbelievably in its state of concen-
tration.



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 61

Economic concentration, manifest in the unification of the
earth's energies.

Intellectual concentration, manifest in the unification of our
knowledge in a coherent system (science).

Social concentration, manifest in the unification of the human
mass as a thinking whole.

To those who have not studied its implications, this slow and
irresistible flow of our history in the direction of more and more
unified groupings has no particular meaning; they relegate it to the
trivial category of surface and incidental phenomena, no more.
But to the enlightened eye this human development, succeeding all
the twists and turns of prehuman consciousness, assumes a daz-
zling significance. For the two curves are a prolongation one of the other.
Tremendous events such as those through which we are now pass-
ing are seen to take shape, and with a brilliant clarity. This tremen-
dous war which so afflicts us, this remolding, this universal longing
for a new order, what are they but the shock, the tremor and the
crisis, beyond which we may glimpse a more synthetic organization
of the human world? And this new order, the thought of which is
in all our minds, what form can it take other than a higher degree
of self-awareness on the part of a Mankind become at once more
complex and more centered upon itself?

No, truly: Life in emerging into Thought did not come to a
stop. Not only has it moved and progressed from the protozoa to
Man, but since the coming of Man it has continued to advance
along its most essential path. We can feel it at this moment quiver-
ing beneath our feet! The ship that bears us is still making head-
way.

And it is here that the ultimate and decisive question arises, fi-
nally the only question that interests us. Thus far Life, and Man
himself, has progressed. So be it. But what of the future? We are
still moving, but can we continue much longer to advance?



62 THE FUTURE OF MAN

Have we not reached a dead end? Can we talk seriously of a
future for Mankind?



7. The Future of Mankind

I make NO claim to be a prophet. Moreover I know, as a scien-
tist, how dangerous it is to extend a curve beyond the facts, that is
to say, to extrapolate. Nevertheless I believe that, basing the argu-
ment upon our general knowledge of the world's history over a
period of 300 million years, we can advance the following two
propositions without losing ourselves in a fog of speculation:

a Firstly, Mankind still shows itself to possess a reserve, a for-
midable potential of concentration, i.e., of progress. We have only
to think of the immensity of the forces, ideas and human beings
that have still to be born or discovered or applied or synthe-
sized. . . . "Energetically" as well as biologically the human group
is still young, still fresh. If we are to judge by what history teaches
us about other living groups, it still has, organically speaking, some
millions of years in which to live and develop.

b Everything leads us to believe that it really does dispose of
this vast reservoir of time, which is necessary for the normal
achievement of its evolution. The earth is far from having com-
pleted its sidereal evolution. We may envisage all kinds of mis-
chance (disaster or disease) which might in theory put an end to our
evolutionary progress: but the fact remains that for 300 million
years Life has paradoxically flourished in the Improbable. Does not
this suggest that its advance may be sustained by some sort of complic-
ity on the part of the "blind" forces of the Universe — that is to say, that it is
inexorable?



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 63

The more we ponder these matters the more must we realize
that, scientifically speaking, the real difficulty presented by Man is
not the problem of whether he is a center of constant progress: it
is far more the question of how long this progress can continue, at
the speed at which it is going, without Life blowing up upon itself
or causing the earth on which it was born to explode. Our modern
world was created in less than ten thousand years, and in the past
two hundred years it has changed more than in all the preceding
millennia. Have we ever thought of what our planet may be like,
psychologically, in a million years' time? It is finally the Utopians,
not the "realists," who make scientific sense. They at least, though
their flights of fancy may cause us to smile, have a feeling for the
true dimensions of the phenomenon of Man.



8. The Advance

HAVING clarified OUR ideas, let us see what action they re-
quire of us. If progress is to continue, it will not do so of its own
accord. Evolution, by the very mechanism of its syntheses, charges itself with
an ever-growing measure of freedom.

If indeed an almost limitless field of action lies open to us in
the future, what shall our moral dispositions be, as we contemplate
this march ahead?

I can think of two, which may be summarized in six words: a
great hope held in common.

a First, the hope. This must spring to life spontaneously in
every generous spirit faced by the task that awaits us; and it is also
the essential impulse, without which nothing can be done. A pas-
sionate longing to grow, to be, is what we need. There can be no
place for the poor in spirit, the sceptics, the pessimists, the sad of



64 THE FUTURE OF MAN

heart, the weary and the immobilists. Life is ceaseless discovery.
Life is movement.

b A hope held in common. Here again the history of Life is
decisive. Not all directions are good for our advance: one alone
leads upward, that which through increasing organization leads to
greater synthesis and unity. Here we part company with the whole-
hearted individualists, the egoists who seek to grow by excluding or
diminishing their fellows, individually, nationally or racially. Life
moves toward unification. Our hope can only be realized if it finds
its expression in greater cohesion and greater human solidarity.

This double point is finally established by the verdict of the
Past.



9. The Crossroads

but HERE THERE is a grave uncertainty to be resolved. The fu-
ture, I have said, depends on the courage and resourcefulness
which men display in overcoming the forces of isolationism, even
of repulsion, which seem to drive them apart rather than draw
them together. How is the drawing together to be accomplished?
How shall we so contrive matters that the human mass merges in
a single whole, instead of ceaselessly scattering in dust?

A priori, there seem to be two methods, two possible roads.

a The first is a process of tightening up in response to ex-
ternal pressures. We are in any case inescapably subject to this
through the negative action of terrestrial causes. The human mass,
because on the confined surface of this planet it is in a state of con-



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 65

tinuous additive growth, in numbers and interconnections, must
automatically become more and more tightly concentrated upon
itself. To this formidable process of natural compression there may
well be added the artificial constraint imposed by a stronger hu-
man group upon a weaker; we have only to look about us at the
present time to see how this idea is seeking, indeed rushing toward,
its realization.

b But there is another way. This is that, prompted by some favor-
ing influence, the elements of Mankind should succeed in making ef-
fective a profound force of mutual attraction, deeper and more
powerful than the surface-repulsion which causes them to diverge.
Forced upon one another by the dimensions and mechanics of the
earth, men will purposefully bring to life a common soul in this
vast body.

Unification by external or by internal force? Compulsion or
Unanimity?

I spoke earlier of the present war. Does it not precisely express
the tension and interior dislocation of Mankind shaken to its roots
as it stands at the crossroads, faced by the need to decide upon its
future?



70. The Choice

gloriously situated by life at this critical point in the evo-
lution of Mankind, what ought we to do? We hold Earth's future
in our hands. What shall we decide?

In my view the road to be followed is clearly revealed by the
teaching of all the past.



66 THE FUTURE OF MAN

We can progress only by uniting: this, as we have seen, is the law
of Life. But unification through coercion leads only to a superficial
pseudo-unity. It may establish a mechanism, but it does not achieve
any fundamental synthesis; and in consequence it engenders no
growth of consciousness. It materializes, in short, instead of spiri-
tualizing. Only unification through unanimity is biologically valid.
This alone can work the miracle of causing heightened personality
to emerge from the forces of collectivity. It alone represents a gen-
uine extension of the psychogenesis that gave us birth.

Therefore it is inwardly that we must come together, and in en-
tire freedom.

But this brings us to the last question of all. To create this una-
nimity we need the bond, as I said, the cement of a favoring influ-
ence. Where shall we look for it; how shall we conceive of this
principle of togetherness, this soul of the Earth?

Is it to be in the development of a common vision, that is to say,
the establishment of a universally accepted body of knowledge, in
which all intelligences will join in knowing the same facts inter-
preted in the same way?

Or will it rather be in common action, in the determination of
an Objective universally recognized as being so desirable that all
activity will naturally converge toward it under the impulse of a
common fear and a common ambition?

These two kinds of unanimity are undoubtedly real, and will,
I believe, have their place in our future progress. But they need to
be complemented by something else if they are not to remain
precarious, insufficient and incomplete. A common body of
knowledge brings together nothing but the geometrical point of in-
telligences. A common aspiration, no matter how ardent, can only
touch individuals indirectly and in an impersonal way that is de-
personalizing in itself.



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 67

It is not a tete-a-tete or a corps-a-corps that we need; it is a heart-
to-heart.

This being so, the more I consider the fundamental question
of the future of the earth, the more it appears to me that the gen-
erative principle of its unification is finally to be sought, not in the
sole contemplation of a single Truth or in the sole desire for a sin-
gle Thing, but in the common attraction exercised by a single Be-
ing. For on the one hand, if the synthesis of the Spirit is to be
brought about in its entirety (and this is the only possible defini-
tion of progress) it can only be done, in the last resort, through
the meeting, center to center, of human units, such as can only be re-
alized in a universal, mutual love. And on the other hand there is
but one possible way in which human elements, innumerably di-
verse by nature, can love one another: it is by knowing themselves
all to be centered upon a single "supercenter" common to all, to
which they can only attain, each at the extreme of himself,
through their unity.

"Love one another, recognizing in the heart of each of you the
same God who is being born." Those words, first spoken two thou-
sand years ago, now begin to reveal themselves as the essential
structural law of what we call progress and evolution. They enter
the scientific field of cosmic energy and its necessary laws.

Indeed, the more I strive, in love and wonder, to measure the
huge movements of past Life in the light of palaeontology, the
more I am convinced that this majestic process, which nothing can
arrest, can achieve its consummation only in becoming Christian-
ized. 1



1 Unpublished. Peking, February 22, 1941. Lecture delivered at the French Em-
bassy, on the third of March of the same year.



68 THE FUTURE OF MAN

PART II. ON THE POSSIBLE BASES OF
A UNIVERSAL HUMAN CREED

THE PURPOSE OF the New York meetings, if I understand it
aright, is not merely to seek a superficial reconciliation between the
diverse forms of Faith which divide the human spirit and make it
at odds with itself, but to find what they have fundamentally in
common. We seek a new spirit for a new order.

I beg to be allowed to offer a brief contribution and personal
testimony, the fruit of thirty years spent in close and sincere con-
tact with scientific and religious circles in Europe, America and the
Far East.



1. The Precise Point of Divergence . . .
God or the World?

it SEEMS TO me clear above all else, setting aside the countless
minor divergences, and ignoring the dull, inert mass of those who
believe in nothing at all, that the spiritual conflict afflicting
Mankind today arises out of the division of minds and hearts into
the two profoundly separated categories of:

a Those whose hopes are directed toward a spiritual state or
an absolute finality situated beyond and outside this world; b Those
who hope for the perfection of the tangible Universe within itself.

The first of these groups, by far the older, is preeminently rep-
resented in these days by the Christians, protagonists of a tran-
scendent and personal God.

The second group, comprising those who for a variety of rea-
sons have dedicated their lives to the service of a Universe which
they conceive as eventually culminating in some form of imper-



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 69

sonal and immanent Reality, is of very recent origin. Throughout
human history this conflict between the "servants of Heaven" and
the "servants of earth" has gone on; but only since the birth of the
idea of Evolution (in some sort divinizing the Universe) have the
devotees of earth bestirred themselves and made of their worship
a true form of religion, charged with limitless hope, striving and
renunciation.

Are we to disdain the world and put it behind us, or live in it
in order to master and perfect it? Mankind is rent asunder at this
moment by these two concepts or rival mysticisms; and in conse-
quence its vital power of adoration is disastrously weakened.

Such in my view is the nature of the crisis, more profound than
any economic, political or social struggle, through which we are
passing.



2. A Principle of Convergence:
The Concept of Noogenesis

any TWO FORCES, provided both are positive, must aprioribe ca-
pable of growth by merging together. Faith in God and faith in the
World: these two springs of energy, each the source of a magnifi-
cent spiritual impulse, must certainly be capable of effectively unit-
ing in such a way as to produce a resulting upward movement. But
in practical terms where are we to look for the principle and the
generative medium which will bring about this most desirable evo-
lutionary step?

I believe that the principle and the medium are to be found in
the idea, duly "realized," that there is in progress, within us and
around us, a continual heightening of consciousness in the Uni-
verse.

For a century and a half the science of physics, preoccupied



70 THE FUTURE OF MAN

with analytical researches, was dominated by the idea of the dissi-
pation of energy and the disintegration of matter. Being now
called upon by biology to consider the effects of synthesis, it is be-
ginning to perceive that, parallel with the phenomenon of corpus-
cular disintegration, the Universe historically displays a second
process as generalized and fundamental as the first: I mean that of
the gradual concentration of its physicochemical elements in nu-
clei of increasing complexity, each succeeding stage of material
concentration and differentiation being accompanied by a more
advanced form of spontaneity and spiritual energy.

The outflowing flood of Entropy equalled and offset by the ris-
ing tide of a Noogenesis! . . .

The greater and more revolutionary an idea, the more does it
encounter resistance at its inception. Despite the number and im-
portance of the facts that it explains, the theory of Noogenesis is
still far from having established itself as a stronghold in the scien-
tific field. However, let us assume that, as all the observable evi-
dence suggests, it will succeed before long in gaining in one form
or another the place it deserves at the head of the structural laws
of our Universe. Plainly the first result will be precisely to bring
about the rapprochement and automatic convergence of the two op-
posed forms of worship into which, as I said, the religious impulse
of Mankind is at present divided.

Once he has been brought to accept the reality of a Noogen-
esis, the believer in this World will find himself compelled to allow
increasing room, in his vision of the future, for the values of per-
sonalization and transcendency. Of Personalization, because a
Universe in process of psychic concentration is identical with a Uni-
verse that is acquiring a personality. And a transcendency because
the ultimate stage of "cosmic" personalization, if it is to be su-
premely consistent and unifying, cannot be conceived otherwise



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 71

than as having emerged by its summit from the elements it super-
personalizes as it unites them to itself.

On the other hand, the believer in Heaven, accepting this
same reality of a cosmic genesis of the Spirit, must perceive that
the mystical evolution of which he dreams presupposes and conse-
crates all the tangible realities and all the arduous conditions of
human progress. If it is to be superspiritualized in God, must not
Mankind first be born and grow in conformity with the entire system of
what we call "evolution"? Whence, for the Christian in particular,
there follows a radical incorporation of terrestrial values in the
most fundamental concepts of his Faith, those of Divine Omnipo-
tence, detachment and charity. First, Divine Omnipotence: God
creates and shapes us through the process of evolution: how can
we suppose, or fear, that He will arbitrarily interfere with the very
means whereby He fulfills His purpose? Then, detachment: God
awaits us when the evolutionary process is complete: to rise above
the World, therefore, does not mean to despise or reject it, but to
pass through it and sublime it. Finally, charity: the love of God ex-
presses and crowns the basic affinity which, from the beginnings of
Time and Space, has drawn together and concentrated the spiri-
tualizable elements of the Universe. To love God and our neigh-
bor is therefore not merely an act of worship and compassion
superimposed on our other individual preoccupations. For the
Christian, if he be truly Christian, it is Life itself, Life in the in-
tegrity of its aspirations, its struggles and its conquests, that he
must embrace in a spirit of togetherness and personalizing unifi-
cation with all things.

The sense of the earth opening and exploding upward into
God; and the sense of God taking root and finding nourishment
downward into Earth. A personal, transcendent God and an evolv-
ing Universe no longer forming two hostile centers of attraction,



72 THE FUTURE OF MAN

but entering into hierarchic conjunction to raise the human mass
on a single tide. Such is the sublime transformation which we may
with justice foresee, and which in fact is beginning to have its effect
upon a growing number of minds, freethinkers as well as believers:
the idea of a spiritual evolution of the Universe. The very trans-
formation we have been seeking!



3. A New Soul for a New World:
Faith Renewed in the Progress of Mankind

from THIS standpoint it is at once apparent that, to unify the
living forces of humanity, at present so painfully at odds, the direct
and effective method is simply to sound the call-to-arms and form
a solid block of all those, whether of the right or the left, who be-
lieve that the principal business of present-day Mankind is to
achieve a breakthrough straight ahead by forcing its way over the
threshold of some higher level of consciousness. Whether Chris-
tian or non-Christian, the people inspired by this particular con-
viction constitute a homogeneous category Though they may be
situated at the two extreme wings of Mankind on the march, they
can advance unequivocally side by side because their attitudes, far
from being mutually exclusive, are virtually an extension one of
the other and ask only to be completed. What more do they need
that they may know and love one another? The union sacree, the
Common Front of all those who believe that the World is still ad-
vancing: what is this but the active minority, the solid core around
which the unanimity of tomorrow must harden?

Despite the wave of skepticism which seems to have swept
away the hopes (too ingenuous, no doubt, and too materialistic) on
which the nineteenth century lived, faith in the future is not dead



SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS 73

in our hearts. Indeed, it is this faith, deepened and purified, which
must save us. Not only does the idea of a possible raising of our
consciousness to a state of superconsciousness show itself daily, in
the light of scientific experience, to be better founded and psycho-
logically more necessary for preserving in Man his will to act; but
furthermore this idea, carried to its logical extreme, appears to be
the only one capable of paving the way for the great event we look
for — the manifestation of a unified impulse of worship in which
will be joined and mutually exalted both a passionate desire to con-
quer the World and a passionate longing to be united with God:
the vital act, specifically new, corresponding to a new age in the
history of Earth.

I am convinced that finally it is upon the idea of progress, and
faith in progress, that Mankind, today so divided, must rely and
can reshape itself.

REMARKS ON A NEW YORK CONGRESS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION.
UNPUBLISHED. PEKING, MARCH 30, 1941.




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