object:1.11 - FAITH IN MAN
book class:The Future of Man
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter
CHAPTER 11
FAITH IN MAN
7. Definition and Novelty
by "faith in Man" we mean here the more or
less active and fervent conviction that Mankind as
an organic and organized whole possesses a future:
a future consisting not merely of successive years
but of higher states to be achieved by struggle. Not
merely survival, let us be clear, but some form of
higher life or superlife.
Considered in its deepest origins this human
trend toward a state of higher being is as old and
universal as the world itself. As far back as we can
trace it, and even in its humblest manifestations,
the advance of Life, however spurred on by the
sheer, hard necessity of continuing to exist, has al-
ways been inspired by an expectation of something
greater. Are not Nature's countless experiments all
variants of a single act of faith, an obstinate feel-
ing of the way toward an outlet leading forward
and ever higher? Above all, at that critical point
where instinct turned reflexively to thought, and
awareness of the future became an accomplished
fact on earth, must not Man, in whom this radical
180 THE FUTURE OF MAN
change occurred, even in his most primitive state have experienced
the vital urge to grasp all things and transcend himself?
Mythology and folklore (we shall come back to this) are, in fact,
filled with symbols and fables expressing the deeply rooted resolve
of Earth to find its way to Heaven; from which it follows that we
may in a perfectly legitimate sense accept the fact that a general-
ized, implicit faith of Man in Man is older than all civilization, and
that it is this, finally, which constitutes the basic impulse informing
all our past history.
But is there not another and even truer sense in which we must
affirm that this faith, in the explicit, collective form of our defini-
tion, represents a specific new attitude in the world and therefore
calls for our particular attention?
I believe that this is so, on the following grounds.
A major problem posed by the fact, of which we are henceforth
assured, that the Universe is in a state of psychic evolution, is the
question of how far its evolutionary course is likely to affect our fu-
ture power of thought. Whatever the eventual answer may be, two
things are undeniable: first, that at certain moments in the past, hu-
man consciousness — however unchanging in its essential frame-
work — has risen to the perception of new dimensions and values;
and secondly that the age in which we are living is precisely such a
moment of awakening and transformation. In the course of a few
generations, almost without our realizing it, our view of the world
has been profoundly altered. Under the combined influence of Sci-
ence and History, and of social developments, the twofold sense of
duration and collectivity has pervaded and reordered the entire
field of our experience; with the twofold result that the future, hith-
erto a vague succession of monotonous years awaiting an unim-
portant number of scattered individual lives, is now seen to be a
period of positive becoming and maturing — but one in which we
can advance and shape ourselves only in solidarity.
FAITH IN MAN 181
Thus we have the simultaneous growth in our minds of two es-
sentially modern concepts, those of collectivity and of an organic
future: a double development precisely engendering the deep-
rooted change of heart that was required to bring about the direct
transformation of a childlike and instinctive faith in Man into its
rational, adult state of constructive, militant faith in Mankind!
A spiritual crisis was inevitable: it has not been slow in coming.
But let us look with open minds at the new world being born
around us amid the convulsions of war. Disregarding the superficial
chaos which prevents us from seeing clearly, probing beneath the un-
speakable disorders that so dismay us, let us try to take the pulse and
temperature of Earth. If we have any power to diagnose we are
bound to recognize that the so-called ills which so afflict us are above
all growing pains. What looks like no more than a hunger for mate-
rial well-being is in reality a hunger for higher being: it is the spirit of
Mankind suddenly alive with the sense of all that remains to be done
if it is to achieve the fulfillment of its powers and possibilities.
2. Power and Ambiguity
it would be criminal or insane to attempt to resist the great ex-
plosion of the inner forces of the Earth that is now beginning. Like
the collectivization which accompanies it, this upsurge of human
faith which we are witnessing is a life-bearing phenomenon, and
therefore irresistible. But that does not mean that we should let our-
selves be borne passively and indiscriminately on the tide. The
more youthful and forceful the energy, the more misguided and
dangerous may be its ebullience. We see this all too clearly in the
present-day world.
We sincerely believe that in itself, and in its only legitimate and
enduring form, faith in Man does not exclude but must on the con-
182 THE FUTURE OF MAN
trary include the worship of Another — One who is higher than
Man. To grow in stature and strength so as to be able to give more
of oneself and clasp in a tighter embrace (as in the Bible story of
Jacob wrestling with the Angel; and as happens on an everyday
level in every passionate union), this is the true and noble manner
of interpreting and canalizing the impulse which urges us upward.
But, as the facts prove only too well, this first way of believing
in Man goes hand in hand with another way, more elementary, im-
mediate and simple, and therefore more alluring. Correcdy inter-
preted, I repeat, faith in Man can and indeed must cast us at the
feet and into the arms of One who is greater than ourselves. But, it
can be argued, why after all should we not conceive this One who
is greater than ourselves as being in fact identical with ourselves?
Given the power he possesses, why should Man look for a God out-
side himself? Man, self-sufficient 1 and wholly autonomous, sole
master and disposer of his destiny and the world's — is not this an
even nobler concept?
Here we have the modern version of the heroic temptation of
all time, that of the Titans, of Prometheus, of Babel and of Faust;
that of Christ on the mountain; a temptation as old as Earth itself;
as old as the first reflective awakening of Life to the awareness of
its powers. But it is a temptation which is only now entering its crit-
ical phase, now that Man has raised himself to the point of being
able to measure both the immensity of the Time that lies before
him and the almost limitless powers made available to him by his
concerted efforts to seize hold of the material springs of the world.
Is the dilemma insoluble or (as we would rather believe) only a
temporary one, destined to vanish like so many others when we
have reached a higher level of spiritual evolution? We may be in
two minds about this.
1 Teilhard uses the English word.
FAITH. IN MAN 183
The fact remains that at the present time a fundamental inner
impulse, newly born in our hearts, is tending to find a dual, and di-
vergent, expression in two apparently incompatible spiritual forms;
on the one hand, the spirit (let us call it "Christian") of sacrifice and
of union centered in the expectation of a Vision in the future; and
on the other hand the Promethean or Faustian spirit of self-worship
based on the material organization of the earth. The ambiguity is
there. And because (always by virtue of a rhythm which may be re-
versed tomorrow) it is the material and tangible aspect which at this
moment of world history seems to hold the initiative in the advance
of Life, the struggle is proceeding in a way which suggests that the
Promethean faith is the only valid one, or at least the more active.
We see no other in the service of the world, or we run the risk of see-
ing no other. Hence the tendency (which is also as old as the world)
of the defenders of the Spirit to regard as diabolical, and to reject as
being among the most formidable manifestations of pride, the irre-
pressible desire for growth and conquest, the unshakeable sense of
power and progress, which at present fills the human breast.
But we must not leap to conclusions. Since by definition ambi-
guity is not perversity but only the danger of perversion, which
after all is not the same thing, let us seek to place ourselves psycho-
logically at a level below the point where the dilemma seems to be
resolving itself in two irreconcilable forms. In other words, let us try
to understand what faith in Man signifies in its undifferentiated
state (pre-Promethean or pre-Christian); what it looks for and what
it offers us.
3. The Uniting Force
present-day mankind, as it becomes increasingly aware of
its unity — not only past unity in the blood, but future unity in
184 THE FUTURE OF MAN
progress — is experiencing a vital need to close in upon itself. A ten-
dency toward unification is everywhere manifest, and especially in
the different branches of religion. We are looking for something
that will draw us together, below or above the level of that which
divides. It may be said, in the aftermath of the war, that this need
is spontaneously and unanimously arising on every hand. But
where are we to discover the mysterious principle of rapprochement?
Are we to look downward or upward — to our common interest or
our common faith?
We must by no means underestimate the force of common in-
terest in a matter of this sort. The visible success of communal un-
dertakings in which the material well-being of the individual
becomes essentially dependent on the functioning of the association
as a whole; more still, on the world scale, the example of the last war,
in which a common danger for a time welded together large sections
of the world — all this decidedly proves that physical necessity, when
it happens to coincide, is a synthesizing factor between human par-
ticles. But this kind of synthesis, we must note, remains fragile in two
respects: firstly, because the coincidence which brought it about is in
the nature of things temporary and accidental; secondly, and above
all, because elements brought together under the compulsion of ne-
cessity or fear cohere only outwardly and on the surface. When the
wave of fear or common interest has passed, the union dissolves
without having given birth to a soul. Not through external pressure
but only from an inward impulse can the unity of Mankind endure
and grow.
And this, it seems, is where the major, "providential" role re-
served by the future for what we have called "faith in Man" dis-
plays itself. A profound common aspiration arising out of the very
shape of the modern world — is not this specifically what is most to
be desired, what we most need to offset the growing forces of dis-
solution and dispersal at work among us?
FAITH IN MAN 185
But here we must be on our guard.
Recently, and in particular through the sympathetic pen of
Aldous Huxley an effort has been made to formulate and crystal-
lize, in a series of abstract propositions, the basis of a common phi-
losophy on which all men of goodwill can agree in order that the
world may continue to progress. We believe this to be helpful, and
moreover we are persuaded that gradually, in religious thought as
in the sciences, a core of universal truth will form and slowly grow,
to be accepted by everyone. Can there be any true spiritual evolu-
tion without it? But shall we not be misled by this formulation of a
common view of the world, infinitely precious in itself, if we con-
sider it simply in terms of its application and result, without look-
ing for the principle and fecundating act of a genuine union? Any
abstract scheme tends of its nature to resolve in an arbitrary fash-
ion, and perhaps prematurely for the whole, the ambiguity of the
future. There is the risk that it will restrict the movement to a given
direction, whereas it is out of the movement as such that the de-
sired effect of unification must come.
But at the youthful stage in which we are at present consider-
ing it, Faith in Man proceeds and operates in a quite different
fashion.
It is true that at the outset it presupposes a certain fundamen-
tal concept of the place of Man in Nature. But as it rises above this
rationalized common platform it becomes charged with a thou-
sand differing potentialities, elastic and even fluid — indivisible, one
might say, by the expressions of hostility to which Thought, in its
gropings, may temporarily subject it. Indivisible and even tri-
umphant: for despite all seeming divisions (this is what matters)
it continues unassailably to draw together and even to reconcile
everything that it pervades. Take the two extremes confronting us
at this moment, the Marxist and the Christian, each a convinced
believer in his own particular doctrine, but each, we must suppose,
186 THE FUTURE OF MAN
fundamentally inspired with an equal faith in Man. Is it not in-
contestable, a matter of everyday experience, that each of these, to
the extent that he believes (and sees the other believe) in the future
of the world, feels a basic human sympathy for the other — not for
any sentimental reason, but arising out of the obscure recognition
that both are going the same way, and that despite all ideological
differences they will eventually, in some manner, come together on
the same summit? No doubt each in his own fashion, following his
separate path, believes that he has once and for all solved the rid-
dle of the world's future. But the divergence between them is in re-
ality neither complete nor final, unless we suppose that by some
inconceivable and even contradictory feat of exclusion (contradic-
tory because nothing would remain of his faith) the Marxist, for
example, were to eliminate from his materialistic doctrine every
upward surge toward the spirit. Followed to their conclusion the
two paths must certainly end by coming together: for in the nature
of things everything that is faith must rise, and everything that rises
must converge.
In short we may say that faith in Man, by the combined effect
of its universality and its elemental quality, shows itself upon ex-
amination to be the general atmosphere in which the higher, more
elaborated forms of faith which we all hold in one way or another
may best (indeed can only) grow and come together. It is not a for-
mula, it is the environment of union.
No one can doubt that we are all more or less affected by this
elementary, primordial faith. Should we otherwise truly belong to
our time? And if, through the very force of our spiritual aspira-
tions, we have been inclined to mistrust it, even to feel that we are
immune from it, we must look more closely into our own hearts. I
have said that the soul has only one summit. But it has also only
one foundation. Let us look well and we shall find that our Faith in
FAITH IN MAN 187
God, detached as it may be, sublimates in us a rising tide of hu-
man aspirations. It is to this original sap that we must return if we
wish to communicate with the brothers with whom we seek to be
united.
ADDRESS TO THE WORLD CONGRESS OF FAITHS
(FRENCH SECTION), MARCH 8, 1947.
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