object:1.17 - DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY UPON ITSELF?
book class:The Future of Man
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter
CHAPTER 17
DOES MANKIND MOVE
BIOLOGICALLY
UPON ITSELF?
Galileo's Question Restated
in the past three years I have twice sought in
these pages 1 to depict and interpret from a purely
scientific standpoint what I have called "the or-
ganic concretion upon itself of Mankind" and the
corresponding "rebound," in terms of biological
evolution, that seems to result from this.
I beg leave to return to the subject, this time not
with the calmness of a theorist adding to his argu-
ment but with a greater and fiercer vehemence, the
better to stress the vital importance and urgency
both for our thought and our action, of the prob-
lem presented by the explosion of human Totaliza-
tion which we already see in full spate around us.
Describing the formation of a thinking enve-
1 Revue des Questions Scientifiques, January 1947 and April, 1948.
In this volume, "The Formation of the Noosphere," p. 149:
and "The Human Rebound of Evolution and its Conse-
quences," p. 192.
244 THE FUTURE OF MAN
lope, a Noosphere, now being shaped round our planet, I wrote that
this was a "defensible hypothesis." But did I speak strongly enough?
Was there not a certain perfidy in those soothing and cautious
words, even a hint of cowardice? I wrote of "plausible views," as
though all this were no more than a game of academic speculation
inviting no intellectual commitment, to be taken up or dropped at
our leisure, with all conclusions deferred. But does this attitude of
unconcerned detachment really meet the situation of the individual
man today, who finds himself confronted by the expansion and over-
flowing of human collectivization? Surely the truth, for those of us
who seek to understand the portents we see multiplying around us,
is that we must face the fact that in no sphere, whether politico-
economic or social, artistic or mystical, can anything stable or en-
during be built on Earth until we have found a positive answer to the
following question:
What degree of reality and what ontological significance are
we to attribute to this strange shift of the current, as a result of
which modern man, scarcely entered into what he supposed to
be the haven of his individual rights, finds himself suddenly
drawn into a great unitary whirlpool where it seems that his
most hard-won attributes, those of his incommunicable, personal
being, are in danger of being destroyed? Is it Life that we see on
the horizon, concealed behind the rise of the masses, or is it
Death?
In recent months my observation and personal knowledge
have made me increasingly conscious of a paramount and imme-
diate necessity: the necessity for our generation of adopting certain
firm values regarding the course of the world, of taking a major
decision upon which the future of human history will depend.
It is this dramatic situation whose urgency I wish to stress in
the form of three essentially related propositions of which each of
us carries the substance in his heart, without choosing, or without
DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY 245
daring, to acknowledge them and accept their inexorable pressure
and their natural logic.
7. The First Point (beyond dispute): The Material
Fact of the In-folding of Mankind upon Itself
AS A BASIS for what I have to say (indeed, as a basis for any at-
tempt to understand what is happening in the world) a plain fact
must be plainly stated which perhaps my previous writings have
failed to detach sufficiently from certain accessory hypotheses — al-
though, rid of encumbrances, it is as evident as the rising sun. I
mean the essentially modern fact of the "social-scientific agglom-
eration" of Mankind upon itself.
Let us first be sure that we understand the meaning of the
word "modern." We can all see, at least in retrospect, that since
Man first appeared on earth he has not only spread over the con-
tinents in an amorphous flood but has constituted himself a group
of exceptional solidarity, not merely ubiquitous but "totalitarian"
in tendency. But during tens of thousands of years the weaving
and extension of the thinking network over the surface of the
globe proceeded so slowly and sporadically that until quite recently
not even the most acute observers, although they recognized the
biological singularity of our nature, seem to have suspected that,
zoologically speaking, Humanity might be wholly unique in its des-
tiny and structural potentialities. To the old naturalists the human
"species" had virtually achieved its vital equilibrium, and they
found nothing (except of course a more highly developed mind
and sensibility) to distinguish it from other animal families where
the probable curve of its development was concerned.
Such was the comfortable vista which, less than a century ago,
began abruptly to change beneath our gaze, something in the fash-
246 THE FUTURE OF MAN
ion of those organic tissues in the living body which, after long
remaining harmless and dormant, their cells apparently indistin-
guishable from those of the surrounding tissue, suddenly burst into
dangerous growth. Or we may liken the change to the fall of an av-
alanche in the mountains — a sudden calamity, long and noiselessly
prepared — or, better still, to the sudden birth of a cyclone in tran-
quil, overheated air, or of a whirlpool in the smooth waters of a
river. Is not this precisely the kind of spectacle to which we are now
awakening (still without really believing in it); the spectacle of
Mankind, suddenly shaken out of a deceptive inertia, being swept
along ever more rapidly, by the current of its own proliferation and
contraction, into the diminishing circles of a sort of maelstrom coil-
ing it irresistibly upon itself?
Let us try and get some idea of the speed (the rising curve, if
you prefer) of this process of in-folding over the period of a single
generation. Looking back to the turn of the century we see limited
wars, clearly marked frontiers, large blank spaces on the map and
distant, exotic lands, to visit which was still like entering another
world. Today we have a planet girdled by radio in the fraction of a
second and by the airplane in a few hours. We see races and cul-
tures jostling one another, and a soaring world population amid
which we are all beginning to fight for elbowroom. We see a world,
stretched almost to breaking-point between two ideological poles,
where it is impossible for the smallest peasant in the remotest coun-
tryside to live without continually being in some way affected or
worried by what is going on in New York or Moscow or China . . .
To steady ourselves in face of this progressive invasion of our pri-
vate lives, and keep our footing in the rising tide, we tend to deny the
reality of what is happening. Or we tell ourselves that this intermin-
gling of all men over all the earth can portend no more than a pass-
ing phase of political readjustment such as has already occurred
many times in history: not a definitive and lasting phenomenon, but
DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY 247
a momentary complexity of circumstances, brought about by chance
at the present time, and later to be resolved by some other chance.
But it must surely be clear that in this we are simply deceiving
ourselves. Is it conceivable that the human world will relax its grip,
loosen the coils which it has woven round all our separate lives?
How can we dare to suppose it?
No matter where we look, there is no indication that the grip
is tending to relax. I do not deny that there are revolts against it,
on the part of individuals and even of nations; but these spasmodic
movements of protest are painfully crushed by the tightening of
the vise almost as soon as they appear.
Nor is this all. As the phenomenon of human in-folding takes
shape, so does its implacable and henceforth unchangeable mecha-
nism become apparent. In origin this is a material force, that of
terrestrial compression acting on a rapidly growing population com-
posed of elements whose field of action grows even more rapidly.
The Earth is visibly contracting, and the hundreds of millions of
people on its surface, reacting to the pressure of this contraction, are
compelled not only to make technical arrangements among them-
selves, but to accept and use the inexhaustible spiritual and intellec-
tual links born of the revolutionary power of Reflection. How can
we hope to resist, how dream of escaping, from the play of these two
cosmic coils (spatial and mental) that close in upon us in a movement
conjugated upon ourselves? The human molecules are tightly
packed together, and the more this is the case the more impossible it
becomes for them, owing to their nature and structure, not to merge
both physically and in spirit. Rising social standards, the rise of the
Machine, the growth of knowledge . . . We are naively disposed to
speak, to marvel, or even grow indignant, as though these separate
events and their conjunction were something accidental or surpris-
ing. But how can we fail to see that we are simply dealing with three
aspects of a single perfectly regulated process on a planetary scale?
248 THE FUTURE OF MAN
It is amazing how often, in casual reading or conversation, one
encounters either a total inability to see and understand, or a delib-
erate refusal to accept, the plainest evidence of this material fact of
the inevitable drawing- together of Mankind. Let us consign past
thinking to the past. Yesterday, perhaps, it was still possible for us to
wonder whether Mankind as an ethnic and cultural whole could be
said to constitute a finally stabilized group: today, overtaken by the
rush of events, there is no longer room for any uncertainty in the
matter. For whatever deeper reasons, still calling for discovery and
debate, the human mass, which at one time seemed immobile or
immobilized, is again on the move. The wheels are in motion and
the speed is visibly increasing, rendering perfectly abortive any at-
tempt at resistance on our part, whether physical or mental, to the
tide that is sweeping us along. For however long it may endure, the
human world will henceforth only be able to continue to exist by
organizing itself ever more tightly upon itself. We may delude our-
selves with the notion that we are simply weathering a storm. The
truth is that we are undergoing a radical change of climate.
We must accept it once and for all. Human Problem No. i is no
longer that of deciding whether we can escape the sociophysical in-
folding of the human race upon itself, since this is irrevocably im-
posed on us by the physiochemical structure of the Earth. All that
matters, the only meaningful question, is to know whither this process
of totalization is leading us — toward what summit, or what abyss?
2. The Second Point (which now emerges):
The Biological Value of Human Socialisation
WHAT results from the foregoing is that, confronted by this
technico-social embrace of the human mass, modern man, in so
DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY 249
far as he has any clear idea of what is happening, tends to take
fright as though at an impending disaster. Having scarcely
emerged, after millennia of painful differentiation, from what the
ethnologists call the state of primitive co-consciousness, are we
now, through the very excess of our civilization, to sink back into
a state of even greater obscurity?
It must be said that appearances (or excuses) are not lacking to
warrant this pessimistic view At close quarters and on the individ-
ual level we see the ugliness, vulgarity and servitude with which the
growth of industrialism has undeniably sullied the poetry of
primeval pastures. At a higher level we see the somber threat, still
increasing despite the surgical operation of the second World War
which was supposed to abate it, of so-called political totalitarian-
ism. And on what is, in a sense, a higher level still we have the dis-
quieting example of such animal groups as termites, ants and bees,
our ancestors in the Tree of Life, which, afflicted by an evil of
which we seem to perceive the symptoms in ourselves, have lapsed
into a state of social enslavement — the very fate toward which an
implacable destiny seems to be impelling us. Evidence such as this,
if it is insufficiently studied, must certainly cause us dismay. Does
it not suggest that this is a general law of life; that the living crea-
ture, compelled for its own survival to attach itself materially and
spiritually to others of its kind, and to an increasing extent as it
progresses autonomously and in individual freedom, is automati-
cally prevented by Nature from rising above a given level of eman-
cipation and consciousness? And may it not be that we are now
thrusting against this barrier the surface-limit of the "I"?
If that is so, then the whirlpool in which we are seized must
end by dehumanizing us. It means that we are lapsing into a sort
of senescence. This is one way of explaining the irresistible move-
ment of concentration that has us in its grip: the quick answer, the
250 THE FUTURE OF MAN
simplest and most morbidly fascinating to sensibilities as shaken
and bruised as our own at the present time. 2
But (let it be cried from the rooftops!) there is another way. To
that tired and outworn approach to the problem of the Socializa-
tion of the Earth we may oppose an entirely different, very much
more constructive interpretation, solidly and scientifically based on
a new vision of Life and the World, of the grand phenomenon of
human Totalization.
Let me briefly recapitulate the theory in its broad outline, look-
ing first at Life as Science is now beginning to rediscover and re-
assess it.
Because plants and animals are excessively fragile in their struc-
ture, and because until now their existence has only been detected,
indeed is only conceivable, in severely limited zones of Time and
Space, we have been accustomed to regard them as an anomaly
and an exception, almost a small, separate world within the great
universe. But much has happened to change this view New lights
have been vouchsafed us — the reality, capable of definition, of a
Cosmogenesis; the discovery of the genesis of atoms, of the in-
creasingly "molecular" aspect of living organisms pursued to the
infinitesimal, and of the persistence of this "molecular" character-
istic in the mechanisms of heredity and evolution rising to the high-
est organic types; the existence of a center of indeterminacy at the
very heart of every element of Matter . . . The cumulative effect of
these revelations has been to open our eyes to a very different and
quite otherwise alluring possibility. This is that living beings, far
from constituting a singular and inexplicable oddity in the world,
are on the contrary the final outcome of an entirely generalized
2 Three reasons, among others, which explain the favor it enjoys in contempo-
rary literature and in the conservative and existentialist press. It is so easy to
write and get oneself read if one sets up as a prophet of disaster. "Frighten
me. . . .
DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY 251
physicochemical process in virtue of which the stuff of the cosmos,
by virtue of the very position it occupies and its structure, is not
only in a state of spatial expansion (as in these days is generally ac-
cepted) but that, even more significantly, it presents itself to our ex-
perience as actuated by a movement of qualitative in-folding (or
arrangement, if you prefer) upon itself; and this "in-folding
arrangement" moves in the direction, not of any homogeneous rep-
etition, but of a formidable growth of complexity, increasing with
the passage of time and resulting in proteins, cells and living mat-
ter of every kind. A certain Laplacian cosmology having accus-
tomed our minds to the idea that the phenomena of the dissipation
of energy and the way of "greatest probability" are the only ones
physically possible, we instinctively recoil from the thought of a par-
tial "lapse" of the Universe into Complexity. Yet, just as the shift to
red of the galactic spectra compels us to accept the centrifugal
flight of the sidereal layers — so, and still more certainly, must the
distribution and history of the small, the big, and, finally the very
large particles (what is each of us, in effect, but an immense mole-
cule?) point to a continuous global drift of the "stuff of things"
toward ever more advanced and bewilderingly elaborate types of
construction that are closed and centered on themselves? 3
Viewed in this way Life, far from being an aberration on the
part of Nature, becomes within the field of our experience noth-
ing less than the most advanced form of one of the most funda-
mental currents of the Universe, in process of taking shape around
us. Which is to conclude that, everywhere exerting its pressure, it
tends with a "cosmic" tenacity and intensity to make continuous
progress wherever it has gained a foothold, always moving in the
same direction and reaching out as far as possible.
3 Thus matter has a "ballast" of, not so much geometry (as Bergson main-
tained), as complexity. The fact may be hard to explain, but it is there before
our eyes.
252 THE FUTURE OF MAN
Having postulated so much, let us return to the significance
and value of human totalization.
What characterizes this process in our eyes, as we have said, is
the network of social-technical bonds from which our personal
freedom suffers at the first contact, and in which, at first sight, we
see nothing but diminution and mechanization.
But why do we, or more precisely how can we, fail to detect in this
same process, and to the exact extent that it constitutes an orga-
nized whole — how fail to perceive, beneath what looks at first sight
like a purely blind mechanical operation, the same process of
"complexification" which, if our new concept is valid, constitutes
the essential proceeding of Life? What discloses and measures, both
as a reagent and a parameter, the eu-complex or organic arrange-
ments of matter, as opposed to the purely fortuitous or mechanical
(pseudo-complex) groupings that take place between atoms and mole-
cules, is the appearance and growth in the former of psychic prop-
erties. In physicochemical terms a very high degree of complexity
begets consciousness: few laws of Nature are so sure, so consistent
(or so little exploited) as this. And whatever may be said about the
"gregariousness of crowds" and the "brutalization of the masses" 4
the fact remains beyond dispute that, although human socialization
may not yet have shown itself to be particularly productive of
virtue, 5 it is this process that has unloosed the formidable scientific
impulse that is causing us to revise our conception of the Universe
from top to bottom.
4 Effects, not of complexity, but of unorganized large numbers.
5 We must wait and see.
6 Without, of course, denying the great fact of the growth of science, the "pes-
simists" tend to see in it nothing but an accidental (and dangerous) by-product
of social mechanization — something utterly without spiritual value: "epi-
mind," one might call it, released by an epiphenomenon.
DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY 253
Human Totalization develops mind; it goes hand-in-hand with "psychogene-
sis": THEREFORE it is of a biological nature, order and dimension.
We need no further evidence, in my view, to prove scientifically that
the social in-folding which we are undergoing is nothing other than
the direct and logical extension, over our heads, of the process of cos-
mic in-folding which gave birth to the first cell and the first thought
on earth. Supercomplexification and superinteriorization, within the
zone that I have called the Noosphere, of the stuff of the Universe:
not only of men, but of the Man who is to be born tomorrow! Every-
thing falls into place around us, amid the so-called human chaos, if
we view it in this light. The World goes on its way — and that is all.
We rebel at yielding to the excess of vitalization that is bearing
us along because we fear that in doing so we shall lose the precious
fragment, "me", which we have acquired. But how can we fail to
see that, of itself and properly controlled, 7 and provided it acts not
simply on what is "mechanizable" (instinct) but on what can be
rendered "unanimizable" (reflective psychism) totalization by its
nature does not merely differentiate but personalizes what it unites?
All things considered it seems, then, that we have two opposed
evaluations of this process of the in-folding of Humanity upon it-
self; a process which is clearly apparent and which nothing can
prevent.
a That the planetary collectivization which confronts us is a
crude phenomenon of mechanization or senescence which will
end by dehumanizing us;
b That on the contrary it is a mark and an effect of biologi-
cal superarrangement destined to ultrapersonalize us.
7 Within a field of affective attraction sufficiently intense to influence the hu-
man mass as a whole and at the same time.
254 THE FUTURE OF MAN
I maintain that of these two judgments it is the second which
is far more likely to fit the reality. That its validity has not yet been
finally demonstrated or verified may be admitted. Nevertheless it is
solid enough for us to feel, considering the moment of history in
which we live, that the time has come when we may, indeed must,
resolutely stake our future on it.
This brings me to the heart of what I am trying to say in these
pages.
The Hour of Choice
IN EVERY SPHERE, physical no less than intellectual and moral,
and whether it be a question of flowing water, a traveler on a jour-
ney, or a thinker or mystic engaged in the pursuit of truth, there
inevitably comes a point in time and place when the necessity pre-
sents itself, to mechanical forces, or to our freedom of choice, of
deciding once and for all which of two paths is the one to take. The
enforced, irrevocable choice at a parting of the ways that will never
occur again: which of us has not encountered that agonizing
dilemma? But how many of us realize that it is precisely the situa-
tion in which social man finds himself, here and now, in face of the
rising tide of socialization?
Borne on a current of Totalization that is taking shape and
gathering speed around us, we cannot, as I have said, either stop
or turn back. Indeed, how can we even contemplate escaping from
a tide that is not only planetary but cosmic in its dimensions?
As I have also shown, two attitudes are theoretically possible in
this situation, two forms of "existentialism." We can reject and re-
sist the tide, seeking by every means to slow it down and even to es-
cape individually (at the risk of perishing in stoical isolation) from
what looks like a rush to the abyss; or we can yield to it and actively
DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY 255
contribute to what we accept as a liberating and life-giving move-
ment.
It remains for me to demonstrate the urgency of the problem;
that is to say, to fulfill my purpose by showing that we have truly
reached the parting of the ways, the point where the waters divide;
and also to show that in this momentous hour we cannot continue
physically to exist (to act) without deciding here and now which of
the two attitudes we shall adopt: that of defiance or that of faith in
the unification of mankind.
The urgency is due first and foremost to the state of deep-
seated irresolution created by our seeming lack of choice in face of
the immense problems which Mankind must solve without delay if
it is to survive. We debate endlessly about Peace, Democracy, the
Rights of Man, the conditions of racial and individual eugenics,
the value and morality of scientific research pushed to the utter-
most limit, and the true nature of the Kingdom of God; but here
again, how can we fail to see that each of these inescapable ques-
tions has two aspects, and therefore two answers, according to whether
we regard the human species as culminating in the individual or
as pursuing a collective course toward higher levels of complex-
ity and consciousness? Let such organizations as the U.N. and
UNESCO continue to multiply and flourish; I for one shall always
rejoice unreservedly in their existence. But we must realize that we
shall be forever building on shifting sand so long as bodies of this
kind are not agreed on the basic values and purpose underlying
their projects and decisions — that is to say, on their attitude toward
human totalization. What good does it do to discuss the ripples on
the surface while the undertow is still uncontrolled?
Without realizing it — and this is at the root of our present polit-
ical and ideological stagnation — we are still desperately clinging to
the old concept, now become unliveable, of a world in a state of hu-
man immobility, as though this idea were not visibly crumbling. In
256 THE FUTURE OF MAN
doing so we run a twofold risk, not only of continuing in a state of
inefficiency and chaos but, which is far worse, of missing what may
be the only chance offered to the earth of achieving its maturity.
For herein lies the tragic nature of a dilemma presenting itself,
as it does to Man, in purely "reflective" terms. We cannot wait pas-
sively upon the statistical play of events to decide for us which road
the world is to take tomorrow. We must positively and ardently take
a hand in the game ourselves. If it is true, as I suggest, that salvation
lies in the direction of an Earth organically in-folded upon itself, it is
then surely evident that, through a reciprocal mechanism of action
and reaction, the vision and prevision of this ultimate end, this out-
come of History and of Life, may be made to play an essential part
in the building of the future, if only by creating the atmosphere, the
psychic field of attraction, without which it will be impossible for Hu-
manity to continue to converge upon itself. Again, if it be true that
Evolution is rebounding on itself through the fact of human total-
ization, it must, becoming conscious, fasten passionately upon itself:
which is to say that Man to progress further, will need to be sustained
by a powerful collective faith. According to whether we believe in it
or reject it, the totalizing process, from which there is no escape, will
either infuse new life into us or destroy us — that is the fact. It is pre-
cisely in order to discover and bring into the open this saving and
transforming Faith that we must, at this crucial instant, take a posi-
tive stand on the spiritualizing and humanizing value of social total-
ization, and thus reaffirm our sense of the Species on a new plane.
We must do so now. Life will not wait for us, and our state is insecure.
Who can say whether tomorrow will not be too late?
What is, in fact, happening in the world today is as though,
four hundred years later and at a higher turn of the spiral, we
found ourselves back in the intellectual position of the contempo-
raries of Galileo. For the men of the sixteenth century it was the
DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY 257
idea of a Universe in motion (in the oversimplified but still per-
fectly recognizable form of an "absolute" rotation of the earth
round the sun) which, as it dawned on their minds, affected them
even more deeply than the ending of the geocentric concept. Un-
der the influence of this initial shock, as we can now see, the whole
sidereal Cosmos, as expressed in terms of the physics, philosophy
and theology of those days, began to give way to a Cosmogenesis:
a transformation that was no doubt less heavily loaded with prac-
tical consequences, or less directly a stimulant of action, than the
one we are now undergoing, which is a passage from the concept
of a static and dispersed humanity to one of humanity biologically
impelled toward the mysterious destiny of a global anthropogene-
sis. It was a transformation of the same order of magnitude, and
psychologically of the same kind: that is to say, an acquiescence, at
once free and enforced, in the necessity of adopting a new point of
view to the extent that this resulted from a general and irresist-
ible maturing of the human consciousness. Following the moment
when a few men began to see the world through the eyes of
Copernicus all men came to see it in the same fashion. A first flash
of illumination, intuitively accepted despite the risk of error; and
as the intuition was increasingly confirmed by observation and ex-
periment, it came to be embodied in the inherited core of human
consciousness. In the sixteenth century — as had already happened
at long intervals in the course of history, and as is again happening to-
day — men found themselves suddenly "up against a blank wall," in
the sense that they felt instinctively that they could not continue to
be men without adopting a positive position toward a given inter-
pretation of the phenomenal framework enclosing them. Accord-
ingly they made their choice. And, as we look back we see that Life,
reaching a major fork in the road, and acting in men and through
men, once again took the right way.
258 THE FUTURE OF MAN
May it happen — I have no doubt that it will, because I am pro-
foundly convinced of the essential bond of complicity uniting Life,
Truth and Freedom — may it happen that our descendants four
centuries hence, being faced by some new parting of the ways that
we cannot yet foresee, will look back and say: "In the twentieth
century they saw clearly Let us seek to follow their example!"
Once again, as in the days of Galileo and the problem of the
movements of the earth, we have to achieve unanimity, this time
regarding the value, whether materially constructive or vitalizing,
of the phenomenon of socialization. But if I am not mistaken the
balance is already swinging in favor of the organic nature (and the
resultant biological effects, which we cannot yet foresee) of human
"planetization." The more we allow ourselves to believe in this
possible superorganization of the world, the more shall we find
reason to believe in it, and the more numerous will become the be-
lievers. It seems that already a collective intuition in that direction,
which nothing will be able to arrest, is on the move. 8
So that it requires no great gift of prophecy to affirm that,
within two or three generations, the notion of the psychic in-
folding of the earth upon itself, in the bosom of some new "space
of complexity," will be as generally accepted and utilized by our
successors as the idea of the earth's mechanical movement round
the sun, in the bosom of the firmament, is accepted by ourselves.
SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE, MAY 4, 1949.
REVUE DES QUESTIONS SCIENTIFIQUES, OCTOBER 2 0, 1949.
8 We must bear in mind that although the horizon in the direction of human to-
talization remains politically, economically and psychologically obscure, this is of
litde importance. The immediate question is not one of knowing precisely
whither the current is taking us and how we shall shoot the rapids, but simply of
deciding, having reached the fork, whether we are following the main course of
the stream — that is to say, are not detaching ourselves from the World in motion.
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