object:1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS
book class:The Future of Man
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter
CHAPTER 6
LIFE AND THE
PLANETS
What Is Happening at This Moment on Earth?
during the five years that the Earth has trem-
bled beneath our feet, its vast human masses split-
ting and reforming, we have begun to be conscious
of the fact that we are in the grip of forces many
millions of times transcending our individual lib-
erties. For even the most positivist and realist
among us the evidence is growing that the present
crisis far exceeds the economic and political factors
which seemed to provoke it, and within the frame-
work of which we may have hoped that it would
remain confined. This conflict is no merely local-
ized and temporary affair, a matter of periodical
readjustment between nations. The events we are
witnessing and undergoing are unquestionably
bound up with the general evolution of terrestrial
life; they are of planetary dimensions. It is therefore
on the planetary scale that they must be assessed,
and it is in these terms that I ask you to consider
them, so that we may better understand, better en-
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 91
dure, and, I will add, better love these things greater than ourselves
which are taking place around us and sweeping us along in their
course.
What does the world-adventure upon which we are embarked
look like, when we seek to interpret it both objectively and hopefully
in the light of the widest, soundest and most modern concepts of as-
tronomy, geology and biology? That is what I propose to discuss
here: not from the viewpoint of Sirius, as the saying is — that is to say,
with the lofty detachment of an observer seeing things from so far off
that they fail to touch him — but with the anxious intensity of a son of
Earth who draws back in order to be able to see more deeply into the
matter and spirit of a movement upon which his happiness depends.
This lecture is divided into three parts:
One. The place of living planets in the Universe. Small-
ness and vastness.
Two. The place of Man on the planet Earth — at the head.
Three. The place of our generation — our own place — in
the evolution of Mankind. Assessment.
escape?
And finally a summing-up: the end of planetary life. Death or
ipe?
Let us begin.
I. LIVING PLANETS IN THE UNIVERSE
1. From the Point of View of the Immense: The Apparent
Insignificance of the Earth
FROM what we now know of astronomy the planets would seem
at first sight to be a perfectly insignificant and negligible element in
92 THE FUTURE OF MAN
the universe as a whole. How does the sidereal universe look to the
eyes of modern science? No doubt you have gazed up at the sky on
a fine winter's night and, like innumerable human beings before
you, had an impression of a serene and tranquil firmament twin-
kling with a profusion of small, friendly lights, all apparently at the
same distance from yourself. But telescopic and spectroscopic ob-
servation, and increasingly exact calculations, are transforming
this comfortable spectacle into a vision that is very much more un-
settling, one which in all probability will profoundly affect our
moral outlook and religious beliefs when it has passed from the
minds of a few initiates into the mass-consciousness of Mankind as
a whole: immensities of distance and size, huge extremes of tem-
perature, torrents of energy. . . .
That we may better understand what the earth means, we
must try to penetrate, step by step, within this "infinity."
First, the stars.
The stars constitute the natural sidereal unit. It is toward them
therefore, the analysis of their structure and the study of their
distribution, that the researches of astrophysics are principally
directed. The process of research is one based entirely on the
analysis of light, calling for miracles of patience, ability and acu-
men; but it is astonishingly fruitful, since it enables exact measure-
ments to be made of the mass, energy, diameter, distance and
movement of objects vast in themselves but ultramicroscopic to us
because of their remoteness.
The first thing to note is that, in certain aspects, the stars seem
to vary a great deal among themselves. Certain of them, the "red
giants," are of colossal dimensions, their diameter exceeding 450
times that of the Sun (if the Sun were as large as they it would ex-
tend beyond Earth, Jupiter and Saturn as far as Uranus!) Others,
the "white dwarfs," are smaller than the earth; and still others, the
most numerous category, closely resemble the Sun both in their di-
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 93
mensions and their yellow color. We find similar contrasts of
brilliance and temperature. One star may be the equivalent of
300,000 suns in luminosity whereas another may amount to only
a fifty-thousandth part of it (as great a difference, the astronomer
Sir James Jeans observed, as there is between a lighthouse and a
glowworm). These, of course, are extreme cases. In the matter of
surface temperature, if the Sun and the majority of stars are round
about 6,000° Centigrade (three times the temperature of an elec-
tric arc) there are some of n,ooo° (Sirius) and even of 23,000°; and
on the other hand there are some as low as 3,500° (the red giants).
But beneath this great diversity, which is due principally to the
varying ages of the stars, there is concealed a sort of deep identity
Whether giants, medium-sized or dwarfs, the stars are curiously
similar in mass (from one to ten times the mass of the sun), which
proves, incidentally, that they must vary prodigiously in their mean
density — 1.4 in the case of the Sun, but 50,000 and even 300,000
in the case of the dwarf stars (a fragment the size of a pinch of
snuff, brought from one of these to Earth, would weigh a ton!)
So we have approximate identity of mass, and therefore cali-
bration. If we now consider the number of the stars (15,000 X io 6
visible to the optical telescope alone) you will understand how it is
possible to say, cosmically speaking, that we are enveloped in a sort
of monstrous gas formed of molecules as heavy as the Sun moving
at distances from each other so great that they have to be reckoned
in light-years (bearing in mind that light travels at a speed of
186,000 miles per second, and that we are only eight light-minutes
distant from the Sun) — a gas made of starsl
A gas of stars. The very conjunction of the two words is star-
tling. But the shock is even greater when we learn that these myriads
of suns scattered in the void are no more than the grains forming a
supergrain of infinitely greater magnitude, and that this in its turn is
no more than one unit amid a myriad of similar units! Imagination
94 THE FUTURE OF MAN
is confounded. . . . Yet this is what we learn, beyond any possibility
of doubt, from the Milky Way and the other galaxies.
You will all have gazed in curiosity at the Milky Way, that long
whitish ribbon which, extending from east to west over the two
hemispheres, girdles our firmament. Astronomers have long felt
that this mysterious, luminous train must constitute one of the most
important structural features of the Universe. They sought, there-
fore, to decipher it, and they have succeeded in doing so. This is the
conclusion, dumbfounding but certain, at which they have arrived.
The Milky Way, they tell us, is not at all, as one might suppose, a
sort of cloud of diffused matter drifting like a mist among the stars.
Instead, it denotes the boundary, it marks the equatorial contour, of
a prodigious lenticular accumulation of cosmic matter nursing, in
its spiral arms, the solar system, all our constellations, all our visible
stars, and further millions besides (perhaps 100,000 X io 6 alto-
gether); these latter being so remote from us that their total effect is
to convey no more than a vague, milky impression to our eyes. It
has been possible to calculate the dimensions of this extraordinary
celestial formation and the speed with which it rotates upon itself.
According to Jeans its diameter is about 200,000 light-years and it
takes 3 million years to complete a single revolution, at a peripheral
speed of several hundred miles per second. Compared with this
stupendous disc, Jeans remarks, the Earth's orbit is no bigger than
a pin's head compared with the surface of the American continent.
But the Milky Way, our Milky Way, is not the only one of its
kind in the Universe. Here and there small milky patches are to be
discerned in the sky, which the telescope shows to be spiral clouds
containing sparks of brilliance. These, as we now know, are infi-
nitely farther away from us than the stars. They do not belong to
our own, immediate world — or, as one might put it, to the sidereal
vessel which bears us. They are other islands, other fragments of
the Universe, other Milky Ways sailing in convoy with our own
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 95
through space (or even diverging from it at fantastic speeds). Several
millions of these galaxies have already been counted (each, we must
remember, composed of millions upon millions of stars), separated
from one another by an average distance of 2 million light-years,
and all of approximately the same size! A gas of galaxies on top of
a gas of stars. . . . This is the truly overwhelming spectacle, far be-
yond our power to picture it, in which our present vision of the
Universe culminates when we look in the direction of the Immense.
But must we not assume, following the logic of this principle of
recurrence, that even beyond this there are supergalaxies, each
formed of a group of spiral nebulae? We cannot be sure, but it
seems improbable. The Universe is not composed, as Pascal
thought, of pieces enclosed one in another, repeating themselves
indefinitely and identically from bottom to top, from the infinites-
imal to the immense. At a certain level the cosmic structure stops
dead, and we pass on to "something else." Beyond the galaxies
there is nothing, according to Einsteinian physics, unless it be the
spherical frame of Space-Time within which all things move in a
circle, without ever coming to an end or being able to leave it. . . .
Let us put aside this still unresolved problem of the upper limits of
the world, and since we do not yet know what may be beyond or
around the galaxies, let us at least consider what unites them — that
is to say, try to describe the genesis of their swarm. It is along this
path, as you will see, that we shall eventually encounter the planets
in search of which we started out.
At the very beginning, so the astronomers tell us — that is to say
billions of years ago — there was in place of the present world a dif-
fused atmosphere, billions of times less dense than air, spreading in
all directions over billions of miles. This "primordial chaos," as
Jeans calls it, must have seemed homogeneous; but inasmuch as it
was subject to the force of gravity it was excessively unstable. A
slight unevenness of distribution occurring by chance at any given
96 THE FUTURE OF MAN
point (a contingency that was bound to arise) was all that was
needed to cause the entire edifice to break up into parts which,
sundering themselves from their neighbors, coiled in more and
more tightly upon themselves in enormous clots — their vastness,
by the law of celestial mechanics, being directly proportionate to
the lightness of the matter of which they were originally com-
posed. This was the first stage of the birth of the galaxies. The
same disruptive process then operated within the separate galaxies,
engendering smaller clots, since cosmic matter had become heav-
ier. Thus the stars appeared.
Are we then to suppose that a third stage occurred in which the
stars, in their turn, gave birth to planets through the condensation
of their substance? This was the famous theory of Laplace; but a
more thorough analysis of the problem has shown that it could not
have happened in this way. Astronomers are today agreed that the
distribution and movement of the heavenly bodies composing the
solar system can only be explained by the hypothesis of a purely
fortuitous occurrence — for example, the near contact of two stars.
This is to say that Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus or little Pluto, the farthest of all, would not exist had not
another sun, by an extraordinary chance, passed so near to our sun
as almost to touch it (within three diameters!) wresting from it, by
force of attraction, a long, cigar-shaped filament which in the
course of time broke up into a string of separate globes. 1
And this brings us to the heart of the problem we set out to
solve, namely: "What is the place, the significance and the impor-
tance of our planets in the Universe?"
Because of their very small dimensions (even Jupiter is a dwarf
1 There is a tendency nowadays to abandon "catastrophic" theories in favor of
"evolutionary" theories (a return to the Kant-Laplace nebula under a new
form, cf. Weizsacher's theory). [Ed.].
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 97
compared with the Sun), the extreme weakness of the energy they
radiate, and the short time they have been in existence (the galax-
ies were billions of years old when the solar system was born); even
more important, because of their mode of existence, the planets
look not merely like poor relations but like strangers and intruders
in the sidereal system. Created by chance, they have no place in the
normal and orthodox evolution of astral matter; with the exasper-
ating result that we know nothing for certain about the existence
or frequency of occurrence of planets outside the solar system. In
Laplace's thesis almost every star should have its girdle of planets.
In present-day theory perhaps one star in 100,000 (Jeans's esti-
mate: Eddington puts the figure at millions) possesses them. And if
to this we add the fact that, in the case of any given planet, it calls
for a further extremely rare accident to produce the conditions
which would endow it with life, we can see what a fantastically small
figure, quantitatively speaking, our Earth cuts in the Universe.
I said just now, in seeking to describe the magnitude of the hu-
man events which are overtaking us, that they were of "planetary"
importance. But is not "planetary" almost synonymous with "in-
finitesimal"? Let me recall from memory the hard words of Jeans
(he wrote more hopeful ones later, you will be relieved to learn):
"What does life amount to? We have tumbled, as though
through error, into a universe which by all the evidence was not in-
tended for us. We cling to a fragment of a grain of sand until such
time as the chill of death shall return us to primal matter. We strut
for a tiny moment upon a tiny stage, well knowing that all our as-
pirations are doomed to ultimate failure and that everything we
have achieved will perish with our race, leaving the Universe as
though we had never existed. . . . The Universe is indifferent and
even hostile to every kind of life."
But let us boldly state it: this bleak vista is not only so discour-
98 THE FUTURE OF MAN
aging as to make action impossible; it is so much at variance, phys-
ically, with the existence and exercise of our intelligence (which, af-
ter all, is the one force in the world capable of dominating the
world) that it cannot be the last word of Science. Following the
physicists and astronomers we have thus far been contemplating
the Universe in terms of the Immense — immensity of space, time,
energy and number. But is it not possible that we have been look-
ing through the wrong end of the telescope, or seeing things in the
wrong light? Suppose, instead, we survey the same landscape —
without, of course, attempting in any way to alter its arrange-
ment — in its biochemical aspect, that of Complexity.
2. In Terms of Complexity; or the Planets
as Vital Centers of the Universe
WE will define the "complexity" of a thing, if you allow, as the
quality the thing possesses of being composed —
a of a larger number of elements, which are
b more tightly organized among themselves.
In this sense an atom is more complex than an electron, a mol-
ecule more complex than an atom, and a living cell more complex
than the highest chemical nuclei of which it is composed, the dif-
ference depending (on this I insist) not only on the number and di-
versity of the elements included in each case, but at least as much
on the number and correlative variety of the links formed between
these elements. It is not, therefore, a matter of simple multiplicity
but of organized multiplicity; not simple complication but centered
complication.
This idea of complexity (more exactly, centrocomplexity) is eas-
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 99
ily grasped. In a universe where science ends by analyzing every-
thing and taking everything apart, it simply expresses a particular
characteristic applicable to every kind of body like its mass, volume
or any other dimension. But what do we gain by using this charac-
teristic, rather than another, for the purpose of classifying the ob-
jects around us?
I will cite two advantages, although it means somewhat antici-
pating the latter parts of this lecture.
First, in the multitude of things comprising the world, an ex-
amination of their degree of complexity enables us to distinguish
and separate those which may be called "true natural units," the
ones that really matter, from the accidental pseudo-units, which are
unimportant. The atom, the molecule, the cell and the living being
are true units because they are both formed and centered, whereas
a drop of water, a heap of sand, the Earth, the Sun, the stars in gen-
eral, whatever the multiplicity or elaborateness of their structure,
seem to possess no organization, no "centricity." However impos-
ing their extent they are false units, aggregates arranged more or
less in order of density.
Secondly, the coefficient of complexity further enables us to es-
tablish, among the natural units which it has helped us to "iden-
tify" and isolate, a system of classification that is no less natural
and universal. Let us try to depict this classification in schematic
form, as it might be drawn on a blackboard.
At the very bottom of the board we have the ninty-two simple
chemical elements (from hydrogen to uranium) formed by groups
of atomic nuclei together with their electrons.
Above these come the molecules composed of groups of
atoms. These molecules, in the case of the carbon compounds,
may become enormous. In the albuminoids (or proteins) there may
be thousands of associated atoms: the molecular weight of hemo-
globin is 68,000.
100 THE FUTURE OF MAN
Above these again come the mysterious viruses, strange bodies
producing a variety of maladies in animals and plants, concerning
which we do not yet know if they are monstrous chemical mole-
cules or living infrabacteria. Their molecular weight runs into mil-
lions.
Higher still we come to the lowest cells. I do not know if any at-
tempt has yet been made to ascertain the atomic content of these (it
must amount to billions) but they are undoubtedly groups of pro-
teins.
And finally we reach the world of higher living forms, each
composed of groups of cells. To take a very simple instance, that of
the plant duckweed; its content is estimated to be 4 x io 20 atoms.
For the present we will disregard an even higher category
which may conceivably have its place at the head of the list — that
formed by the grouping, not merely of cells, but of metazoa syn-
thetically associated in such a manner as to comprise, when taken
together, a single, living superorganism. We shall come back to this.
This scheme of classification, based essentially on the intimate
structure of beings, is undeniably natural in principle. But it can
also be seen to possess a double and extreme significance.
It is significant, in the first place, because for the scientist it
bridges the long-standing, troublesome and seemingly irreducible
gap between biology and physics. The wide distinction, which for
philosophical reasons it has been thought necessary to draw between
life and matter, ceases to be valid as a law of recurrence comes to light,
in the phenomenal field, experientially linking these two orders of
phenomena. Beyond the millionth atom everything happens as
though the material particles quickened and were vitalized; the Uni-
verse organizes itself in a single, grand progression, somewhat untidy
no doubt, but on the whole clear in its orientation, ascending from
the most rudimentary atom to the highest form of living things.
Secondly it is significant because, arranged according to our
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 101
scale of complexity, the elements succeed one another in the histor-
ical order of their birth. The place in the scale occupied by each par-
ticle situates the element chronologically in the genesis of the
Universe, that is to say, in Time. It dates it.
Thus the rising scale conforms both to the ascending move-
ment toward higher consciousness and to the unfolding of evolu-
tionary time. Does not this suggest that, by using the degree of
complexity as a guide, we may advance very much more surely
than by following any other lead as we seek to penetrate to the
truth of the world and to assess, in terms of absolute values, the
relative importance, the place, of all things?
With this in mind let us look again at the vast sidereal units
(galaxies and suns) and this time try to assess their importance not
in terms of their immensity or even complexity (since, as I have
said, nebulae and stars are no more than aggregates) but in terms
of the complexity of the elements which compose them.
We now see a very different picture; a complete reversal of val-
ues and perspective.
Let us look first at what is largest, the galaxies. In their least
condensed parts (that is to say, in what they still contain of the ves-
tiges of primordial chaos), the matter composing them is extremely
tenuous; probably hydrogen, the most primitive substance known
to us in the field of distinguishable matter. One nucleus and one
electron: the simplest combination imaginable.
Now come down a stage in the scale of the immensities and
look at the stars. Here the chemism is more elaborate. Whether in
the red giants, the medium yellows or the white dwarfs, we may
surmise the presence in the center of heavy and extremely unsta-
ble elements possessing a greater atomic weight than uranium (un-
less these are simply "ordinary matter" reduced to a physical state
of extraordinary compression). At the same time, in the lighter
surface-zone enveloping these depths the spectroscope can discern
102 THE FUTURE OF MAN
the entire range of our simple elements. In the stars, therefore, if
we compare them with the original galaxies, the degree of com-
plexity rises rapidly; but, and this is of major importance, it cannot
go beyond a certain stage; that is to say (if we except a number of
simple groups perceptible in the incandescent atmosphere of cer-
tain stars) it cannot reach the level of the composite bodies, i.e., the
large molecules. The fact is that even on the periphery of these
prodigious centers of energy the temperature is far too great for
any higher combination to possess stability. The stars are essen-
tially laboratories in which Nature, starting with primordial hydro-
gen, manufactures atoms. For the operation to go beyond this point
we have to imagine two astonishing things:
First, that by a sort of "skimming" process a portion of the
stellar substance separates from the rest, deriving entirely from the
surface-zone of lighter atoms which are not constantly threatened
with radioactive disintegration. The larger molecules can only be
constructed of elements possessing almost unlimited stability.
Secondly, that this light and stable "cream" of any given star,
having escaped beyond the reach of the tempest of energy blazing
at the heart of the parent-body, may yet remain sufficiently close
to it to derive a moderate benefit from its radiations: for the large
molecules need energy for their synthesis.
But are not these two providential occurrences (the selection of
a suitable "dough" and its treatment in a suitable "oven") precisely
what that mysterious body, our father-star, effected in a single op-
eration when, passing close to our Sun, it detached from its surface
and scattered over a wide distance the ribbon of matter that be-
came the planets?
You will now see where my argument is tending, or more ex-
actly, where the guide which we have elected to follow, the scale of
complexity, is irresistibly leading us. Despite their vastness and
splendor the stars cannot carry the evolution of matter much be-
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 103
yond the atomic series: it is only on the very humble planets, on
them alone, that the mysterious ascent of the world into the sphere
of high complexity has a chance to take place. However inconsid-
erable they may be in the history of sidereal bodies, however acci-
dental their coming into existence, the planets are finally nothing
less than the key-points of the Universe. It is through them that the
axis of Life now passes; it is upon them that the energies of an Evo-
lution principally concerned with the building of large molecules is
now concentrated.
We may well be dismayed by the rarity and improbability of
heavenly bodies such as our own. But does not everyday experience
teach us that in every order of Nature, and at every level, nothing
succeeds except at the cost of prodigious waste and fantastic haz-
ards? A monstrously fragile conjunction of chances normally dic-
tates the birth of the most precious and essential beings. We can
only bow before this universal law whereby, so strangely to our
minds, the play of large numbers is mingled and confounded with
a final purpose. Without being overawed by the Improbable, let us
now concentrate our attention on the planet we call Earth. En-
veloped in the blue mist of oxygen which its life breathes, it floats at
exactly the right distance from the sun to enable the higher
chemisms to take place on its surface. We do well to look at it with
emotion. Tiny and isolated though it is, it bears clinging to its flanks
the destiny and future of the Universe.
II. MAN ON THE PLANET EARTH:
THE xVlOST COMPLEX OF MOLECULES
having established, ON the basis of complexity, the astral
preeminence of the planets in the sidereal system, and particularly
that of the Earth, our obvious next step is to seek to determine, in
104 THE FUTURE OF MAN
cosmic terms, the significance and value on Earth of what we very
improperly call "the human species. 55
If the essential function and dignity of the Earth consist in its
being one of the rare laboratories where, in time and space, the
synthesis of ever larger molecules is proceeding; and if, as our table
of complexity shows, living organisms, far from originating in
germs fallen upon Earth from the celestial spaces, are simply the
highest composites to spring from planetary geochemism, 2 then
the discovery of Man's absolute place in the Universe becomes
simply a matter of deciding what position we who constitute
Mankind occupy in the evolving range of supermolecules.
Here, however, a difficulty arises.
Where relatively simple molecular units are concerned their or-
der of complexity may be roughly expressed by the number of
atoms they contain, their "corpuscular number 55 as one might call
it. But when this corpuscular number exceeds a million (from the
virus on) and still more when we come to the higher forms of life
(there are something like a hundred billion cells in an average mam-
mal, and hundreds of millions of atoms to each cell!) it becomes
impossible to estimate the number of atoms, which would be so vast
as to be almost meaningless even if it could be calculated. At this
level of organization, in fact, the actual number of atoms contained
in complex units is of minor importance compared with the num-
ber and quality of the links established between the atoms.
'if?
2 I need hardly point out that for the purpose of this lecture, which does not
seek to go outside the field of scientific observation, only the succession and in-
terdependence of phenomena are taken into account: that is to say, an experi-
mental law of recurrence, not an ontological analysis of causes.
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 105
HOW THEN ARE we to go about classifying the higher living units
so that the position of Man in terms of complexity may be deter-
mined? What method shall we adopt?
We can do it very simply by introducing what is called a
change of variable. The more complex a being is, so our Scale of
Complexity tells us, the more is it centered upon itself and there-
fore the more conscious does it become. In other words, the higher
the degree of complexity in a living creature, the higher its con-
sciousness; and vice versa. The two properties vary in parallel and
simultaneously If we depict them in diagrammatic form, they are
equivalent and interchangeable. So it comes to this, that when we
have reached the point where complexity can no longer be reck-
oned in number of atoms we can nevertheless continue to measure
it (and accurately) by noting the increase of consciousness in the
living creature — in practical terms, the development of its nervous
system. This is the solution of our problem.
Accordingly, if we use the factor of psychic growth (or, which
comes to the same thing, progress of cerebralization) as a scale
whereby we may measure the growth of complexity through the
maze of invertebrates, arthropods and vertebrates, the position
and significance of the human type in nature at once becomes ap-
parent. For of all the numberless types of living units that have ap-
peared in the course of the last 300 million years, Man, judged by
his power of reflection (itself bound up with the ultracomplexity of
a brain composed of many millions of cells) not only comes indis-
putably first, but occupies a place of his own at the head of all the
other "very great complexes" evolved on Earth. And this inciden-
tally explains why he tends increasingly to break away from the rest
of terrestrial life, to detach himself in such a manner as to form
(we shall return to this) a separate planetary envelope.
What does this mean except that, having been led by the idea
106 THE FUTURE OF MAN
of complexity to consider the Earth one of the vital points of the
Universe, we find ourselves compelled, following the same princi-
ple, to recognize in Man the most advanced, and therefore the
most valuable, of all the planetary elements? If it is the Earth
which bears the fortunes of the world, then it is Man, in his ex-
treme centro-complexity, who bears the fortunes of the Earth.
But if that is our situation, what is our destiny?
III. THE PRESENT STATE OF MANKIND:
THE PHASE OF PLAN ETIZATI ON
TO OPEN any book treating scientifically, philosophically or socio-
logically of the future of the Earth (whether by a Bergson or a
Jeans) is to be struck at once by a presupposition common to most of
their authors, certain biologists excepted. Explicitly or by inference
they talk as though Man today had reached a final and supreme
state of humanity beyond which he cannot advance; or, in the lan-
guage of this lecture, that, Matter having attained in Homo sapiens
its maximum of centro-complexity on Earth, the process of super-
moleculization on the planet has for good and all come to a stop.
Nothing could be more depressing, but also, fortunately, more
arbitrary and even scientifically false, than this doctrine of immobil-
ity. No proof exists that Man has come to the end of his potenti-
alities, that he has reached his highest point. On the contrary
everything suggests that at the present time we are entering a pecu-
liarly critical phase of superhumanization. This is what I hope to
persuade you of by drawing your attention to an altogether extraor-
dinary and highly suggestive condition of the world around us, one
which we all see and are subject to, but without paying any attention
to it, or at least without understanding it: I mean the increasingly
rapid growth in the human world of the forces of collectivization.
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 107
The phenomenon calls for no detailed description. It takes the
form of the all-encompassing ascent of the masses; the constant
tightening of economic bonds; the spread of financial and intel-
lectual associations; the totalization of political regimes; the closer
physical contact of individuals as well as of nations; the increasing
impossibility of being or acting or thinking alone — in short, the rise,
in every form, of the Other around us. We are all constantly aware
of these tentacles of a social condition that is rapidly evolving to
the point of becoming monstrous. You feel them as I do, and prob-
ably you also resent them. If I were to ask your views you would
doubtless reply that, menaced by this unleashing of blind forces,
there is nothing we can do but evade them to the best of our abil-
ity, or else submit, since we are the victims of a sort of natural ca-
tastrophe against which we are powerless and in which there is no
meaning to be discerned.
But is it true that there is nothing to understand? Let us look
more closely, once again by the light of our principle of complexity.
The first thing to give us pause, as we survey the progress of
human collectivization, is what I would call the inexorable nature
of a phenomenon which arises directly and automatically out of
the conjunction of two factors, both of a structural kind: first, the
confined surface of the globe, and secondly, the incessant multipli-
cation, within this restricted space, of human units endowed by
ever-improving means of communication with a rapidly increasing
scope for action; to which may be added the fact that their
advanced psychic development makes them preeminendy capable
of influencing and interpenetrating one another. Under the
combined effect of these two natural pressures a sort of mass-
concretion of Mankind upon itself comes of necessity into opera-
tion.
But, the second noteworthy point, the phenomenon of concre-
tion, or cementing, turns out to be no sudden or unpredictable
108 THE FUTURE OF MAN
event. Looking at the picture as a whole we see that Life, from its
lowest level, has never been able to effect its syntheses except
through the progressively closer association of its elements, whether
in the oceans or on land. Upon an imaginary earth of constantly in-
creasing extent, living organisms, being only loosely associated,
might well remain at the monocellular stage (if indeed they got so
far); and certainly Man, if free to live in a scattered state, would
never have reached even the neolithic stage and social development.
The totalization in progress in the modern world is in fact nothing
but the natural climax and paroxysm of a process of grouping
which is fundamental to the elaboration of organized matter. Mat-
ter does not vitalize or supervitalize itself except by compression.
I do not think it is possible to reflect upon this twofold in-
rooting, both structural and evolutionary, which characterizes the
social events affecting us, without being at first led to the surmise,
and finally overwhelmed by the evidence, that the collectivization
of the human race, at present accelerated, is nothing other than a
higher form adopted by the process of moleculization on the sur-
face of our planet. The first phase was the formation of proteins
up to the stage of the cell. In the second phase individual cellular
complexes were formed, up to and including Man. We are now at
the beginning of a third phase, the formation of an organicosocial
supercomplex, which, as may easily be demonstrated, can only occur
in the case of reflective, personalized elements. First the vitalization of
matter, associated with the grouping of molecules; then the ho-
minization of Life, associated with a supergrouping of cells; and fi-
nally the planetization of Mankind, associated with a closed grouping
of people: Mankind, born on this planet and spread over its entire
surface, coming gradually to form around its earthly matrix a sin-
gle, major organic unity, enclosed upon itself; a single, hypercom-
plex, hypercentered, hyperconscious arch-molecule, coextensive
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 109
with the heavenly body on which it was born. Is not this what is
happening at the present time — the closing of this spherical, think-
ing circuit?
This idea of the planetary totalization of human conscious-
ness (with its unavoidable corollary that wherever there are
life-bearing planets in the Universe, they too will become encom-
passed, like the Earth, with some form of planetized spirit) may at
first sight seem fantastic: but does it not exactly correspond to the
facts, and does it not logically extend the cosmic curve of molec-
ulization? It may seem absurd, but in its very fantasy does it not
heighten our vision of Life to the level of other and universally ac-
cepted fantasies, those of atomic physics and astronomy? However
mad it may seem, the fact remains that great modern biologists,
such as Julian Huxley and J. B. S. Haldane, are beginning to talk
of Mankind, and to predict its future, as though they were dealing
(all things being equal) with a brain of brains.
So why not?
Clearly this is a matter in which I cannot compel your assent.
But I can assure you, of my own experience, that the acceptance
of this organic and realistic view of the social phenomenon is both
eminently satisfying to our reason and fortifying to our will.
Satisfying to the intelligence above all. For if it be true that at this
moment Mankind is embarking upon what I have called its "phase
of planetization," then everything is clarified, everything in our
field of vision acquires a new sharpness of outline.
The tightening network of economic and psychic bonds in
which we live and from which we suffer, the growing compulsion
to act, to produce, to think collectively which so disquiets us — what
do they become, seen in this way, except the first portents of the
superorganism which, woven of the threads of individual men, is
preparing (theory and fact are at one on this point) not to mecha-
110 THE FUTURE OF MAN
nize and submerge us, but to raise us, by way of increasing com-
plexity, to a higher awareness of our own personality?
The increasing degree, intangible, and too little noted, in which
present-day thought and activity are influenced by the passion for
discovery; the progressive replacement of the workshop by the lab-
oratory, of production by research, of the desire for well-being by
the desire for more-being — what do these things betoken if not the
growth in our souls of a great impulse toward superevolution?
The profound cleavage in every kind of social group (families,
countries, professions, creeds) which during the past century has
become manifest in the form of two increasingly distinct and ir-
reconcilable human types, those who believe in progress and those
who do not — what does this portend except the separation and
birth of a new stratum in the biosphere?
Finally, the present war; a war which for the first time in his-
tory is as widespread as the earth itself; a conflict in which human
masses as great as continents clash together; a catastrophe in which
we seem to be swept off our feet as individuals — what aspect can
it wear to our awakened eyes except that of a crisis of birth, almost
disproportionately small in relation to the vastness of what it is des-
tined to bring forth?
Enlightenment, therefore, for our intelligence. And, let it be
added, sustenance and necessary reassurance for our power of will. Through
the centuries life has become an increasingly heavy burden for Man
the Species, just as it does for Man the Individual as the years pass.
The modern world, with its prodigious growth of complexity, weighs
incomparably more heavily upon the shoulders of our generation
than did the ancient world upon the shoulders of our forebears. Have
you never felt that this added load needs to be compensated for by an
added passion, a new sense of purpose? To my mind, this is what is
"providentially 55 arising to sustain our courage — the hope, the belief
that some immense fulfillment lies ahead of us.
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 111
If Mankind were destined to achieve its apotheosis, if Evolution
were to reach its highest point, in our small, separate lives, then in-
deed the enormous travail of terrestrial organization into which we
are born would be no more than a tragic irrelevance. We should all
be dupes. We should do better in that case to stop, or at least to call
a halt, destroy the machines, close the laboratories, and seek what-
ever way of escape we can find in pure pleasure or pure nirvana.
But if on the contrary Man sees a new door opening above
him, a new stage for his development; if each of us can believe that
he is working so that the Universe may be raised, in him and
through him, to a higher level — then a new spring of energy will
well forth in the heart of Earth's workers. The whole great human
organism, overcoming a momentary hesitation, will draw its breath
and press on with strength renewed.
Indeed, the idea, the hope of the planetization of life is very
much more than a mere matter of biological speculation. It is more
of a necessity for our age than the discovery, which we so ardently
pursue, of new sources of energy. It is this idea which can and must
bring us the spiritual fire without which all material fires, so labori-
ously lighted, will presently die down on the surface of the thinking
earth: the fire inspiring us with the joy of action and the love of life.
All this, you may say to me, sounds splendid: but is there not
another side to the picture? You tell us that this new phase of hu-
man evolution will bring about an extension and deepening of
terrestrial consciousness. But do not the facts contradict your ar-
gument? What is actually happening in the world today? Can we
really detect any heightening of human consciousness even in the
most highly collectivized nations? Does it not appear, on the con-
trary, that social totalization leads directly to spiritual retrogression
and greater materialism?
My answer is that I do not think we are yet in a position to
judge recent totalitarian experiments fairly: that is to say, to decide
112 THE FUTURE OF MAN
whether, all things considered, they have produced a greater de-
gree of enslavement or a higher level of spiritual energy. It is too
early to say But I believe this can be said, that in so far as these first
attempts may seem to be tending dangerously toward the subhu-
man state of the ant hill or the termitary, it is not the principle of
totalization that is at fault but the clumsy and incomplete way in
which it has been applied.
We have to take into account what is required by the law of
complexity if Mankind is to achieve spiritual growth through col-
lectivization. The first essential is that the human units involved in
the process shall draw closer together, not merely under the pres-
sure of external forces, or solely by the performance of material
acts, but directly, center to center, through internal attraction. Not
through coercion, or enslavement to a common task, but through
unanimity in a common spirit. The construction of molecules ensues
through atomic affinity. Similarly, on a higher level, it is through
sympathy, and this alone, that the human elements in a personalized
universe may hope to rise to the level of a higher synthesis.
It is a matter of common experience that within restricted
groups (the pair, the team) unity, far from diminishing the individ-
ual, enhances, enriches and liberates him in terms of himself. True
union, the union of heart and spirit, does not enslave, nor does it
neutralize the individuals which it brings together. It superpersonal-
izes them. Let us try to picture the phenomenon on a terrestrial
scale. Imagine men awakening at last, under the influence of the
ever-tightening planetary embrace, to a sense of universal solidar-
ity based on their profound community, evolutionary in its nature
and purpose. The nightmares of brutalization and mechanization
which are conjured up to terrify us and prevent our advance are at
once dispelled. It is not harshness or hatred but a new kind of love,
not yet experienced by man, which we must learn to look for as it
is borne to us on the rising tide of plane tization.
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 113
Reflecting, even briefly, on the state of affairs which might
evoke this universal love in the human heart, a love so often vainly
dreamed of, but which now leaves the fields of Utopia to reveal it-
self as both possible and necessary, we are brought to the following
conclusion: that for men upon earth, all the earth, to learn to love
one another, it is not enough that they should know themselves to
be members of one and the same thing] in "planetizing" themselves
they must acquire the consciousness, without losing themselves, of
becoming one and the same person. For (and this is writ large in the
Gospel) there is no total love that does not proceed from, and exist
within, that which is personal.
And what does this mean except, finally, that the planetization
of Mankind, if it is to come properly into effect, presupposes, in
addition to the enclosing Earth, and to the organization and con-
densation of human thought, yet another factor? I mean the rise
on our inward horizon of a cosmic spiritual center, a supreme pole
of consciousness, upon which all the separate consciousnesses of
the world may converge and within which they may love one an-
other: the rise of a God.
It is here that reason may discern, conforming to and in har-
mony with the law of complexity, 3 an acceptable way of envisag-
ing "the end of the world."
IV. THE END OF PLANETARY LIFE:
MATURITY AND WITHDRAWAL
the END OF the world — for us, that is to say, the end of
Earth. . . . Have you ever thought seriously, in human terms, about
that somber and certain eventuality?
3 Which here culminates, we may note, in a sort of proof of the existence of
God: "proof by complexity."
114 THE FUTURE OF MAN
Life at the beginning seemed modest in its requirements. A few
hours in the sun were all it seemed to ask and all it needed to justify
itself in its own eyes. But this was only a semblance, belied at the
earliest stages of vitalization by the tenacity with which the most
humble cells reproduce themselves and multiply. This tenacity con-
tinues through all the enormous effusion of the animal kingdom,
and bursts into the light of day with the appearance, in thinking
Man, of the formidable power of prevision. It cannot but grow still
more imperious with every forward stride of human consciousness.
I have spoken of the impulse to act, without which there can be no
action. But in practice it is not enough, if the impulse is to be sus-
tained in face of the ever-growing onslaughts of the taedium vitae, for
it to be offered nothing more than an immediate objective, even
though this be as great as the planetization of Mankind. We must
strive for ever more greatness; but we cannot do so if we are faced
by the prospect of an eventual decline, a disaster at the end. With
the germ of consciousness hatched upon its surface, the Earth, our
perishable earth threatened by the final, absolute zero, has brought
into the Universe a demand, henceforth irrepressible, not only that
all things shall not die, but that what is best in the world, that which
has become most complex, most highly centered, shall be saved. It
is through human consciousness, genetically linked to a heavenly
body whose days are ultimately numbered, that Evolution pro-
claims its challenge: either it must be irreversible, or it need not go on
at all! Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the
thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind. But
what will presently be left of Mankind?
Thus every attempt to situate Man and the Earth in the frame-
work of the Universe comes inevitably upon the heavy problem of
death, not of the individual but on the planetary scale — a death
which, if we seriously contemplate it, must instantly paralyze all
the vital forces of the Earth.
LIFE AND THE PLANETS 115
In an attempt to dispel this shadow Jeans calculated that the
Earth has many millions of years of habitability ahead of it, so
that Man is still only on the threshold of his existence. He bade us
warm our hearts, in this fresh dawn, with the almost limitless
prospects of the glorious day that is only beginning. But a few
pages previously he had talked of Mankind sadly growing old and
disillusioned on a chilling globe, faced by inevitable extinction.
Does not that first thought destroy the second?
Others seek to reassure us with the notion of an escape
through space. We may perhaps move to Venus — perhaps even
further afield. But apart from the fact that Venus is probably not
habitable (is there water?) and that, if journeying between celestial
bodies were practicable, it is hard to see why we ourselves have not
already been invaded, this does no more than postpone the end.
We cannot resolve this contradiction, between the congenital
mortality of the planets and the demand for irreversibility devel-
oped by planetized life on their surface, by covering it up or defer-
ring it: we have finally to banish the specter of Death from our
horizon.
And this we are enabled to do by the idea (a corollary, as we
have seen, of the mechanism of planetization) that ahead of, or
rather in the heart of, a universe prolonged along its axis of com-
plexity, there exists a divine center of convergence. That nothing
may be prejudged, and in order to stress its synthesizing and per-
sonalizing function, let us call it the point Omega. Let us suppose that
from this universal center, this Omega point, there constantly em-
anate radiations hitherto only perceptible to those persons whom
we call "mystics." Let us further imagine that, as the sensibility or
response to mysticism of the human race increases with planetiza-
tion, the awareness of Omega becomes so widespread as to warm
the earth psychically while physically it is growing cold. Is it not
conceivable that Mankind, at the end of its totalization, its folding-
116 THE FUTURE OF MAN
in upon itself, may reach a critical level of maturity where, leaving
Earth and stars to lapse slowly back into the dwindling mass of pri-
mordial energy, it will detach itself from this planet and join the
one true, irreversible essence of things, the Omega point? A phe-
nomenon perhaps outwardly akin to death: but in reality a simple
metamorphosis and arrival at the supreme synthesis. An escape
from the planet, not in space or outwardly, but spiritually and in-
wardly, such as the hypercentration of cosmic matter upon itself
allows.
This hypothesis of a final maturing and ecstasy of Mankind,
the logical conclusion of the theory of complexity, may seem even
more farfetched than the idea (of which it is the extension) of the
planetization of Life. Yet it holds its ground and grows stronger
upon reflection. It is in harmony with the growing importance
which leading thinkers of all denominations are beginning to at-
tach to the phenomenon of mysticism. In any event, of all the the-
ories which we may evolve concerning the end of the Earth, it is
the only one which affords a coherent prospect wherein, in the re-
mote future, the deepest and most powerful currents of human
consciousness may converge and culminate: intelligence and ac-
tion, learning and religion.
LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE FRENCH EMBASSY IN PEKING,
MARCH 10, 1945. ETUDES, MAY 1946.
questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or via the comments below
or join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers