object:1.19 - ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD OF US OF AN ULTRA-HUMAN
book class:The Future of Man
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter
CHAPTER 19
ON THE PROBABLE
EXISTENCE AHEAD OF
US OF AN "ULTRA-HUMAN"
(Reflections of a Biologist)
1. Physicobiological Definition of the Human:
A Specific Superstate of Living Matter
at A first approximation, if to begin with we
try to observe it from a purely experimental stand-
point, the Human amounts to no more than a par-
ticular fragment of matter brought locally to a
state of extreme complexity or (which seems to be
only another aspect of the same phenomenon)
extreme "corpuscularity": the effect of its elab-
oration being to bring about the positive predomi-
nance, on a reflective level, of the purposeful
operation of individual centers of action over the
workings of hazard and large numbers.
On a reflective level: that is what it is important to
understand.
From the beginning and throughout the his-
ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD 271
tory of the vitalization of matter we see the progressive growth of
what is in fact psychism within more and more complex and inte-
riorized organic systems (living super molecules). Millions of years
before the birth of Man, the animal felt, discovered and knew,
but its consciousness remained simple and direct. Only Man upon
this earth, completing the circle of knowledge in the depths of
himself, knows that he knows — with the multiplicity of consequences
that we all experience, without having fully assessed their stupen-
dous biological significance: prevision of the future, construction
of ordered systems, power of planned invention, regulation (and
rebounding) of the evolutionary process, etc. . . . We often hear
talk of the "intellectual fringe of instinct" and "animal intelli-
gence." Such expressions, to the extent that the word "intelli-
gence" is interpreted in its full sense of reflective psychism, are
scientifically false and dangerous inasmuch as they conceal or in-
validate the formidable event represented by the "punctiform" in-
folding of a psychic core upon itself — that is to say, the progress
of Consciousness from the first to the second stage of its powers. It
is, of course, perfectly legitimate to regard all the biological stems
composing the Biosphere as proceeding equally, each according
to its own orientation, in the universal direction of considered
thought. But what is even more certain, so that it becomes self-
evident when we observe in the light of facts the revolutionary bi-
ological superiority of Thought over Instinct, is that if a given
Phylum X, shall we say, preceding the anthropoids, had suceeded
in passing the barrier separating reflective consciousness from di-
rect consciousness, Man would never have come into existence: in-
stead of him, Phylum X would have woven and constituted the
Noosphere.
In short, sharply sundered by a critical surface of transforma-
tion from the layers of organized matter in which it exists, the Hu-
272 THE FUTURE OF MAN
man does indeed represent, at the heart (or summit) of Life, a core
of "hyperpsychized" cosmic substance, perfectly defined and in-
stantly recognizable by its growing, pervasive power of reasoned
autoevolution which, so far as we know, it is unique in possessing.
2. Growth of the Human:
The Historical Phase of Expansion
the FACT that a crucial discontinuity exists between the purely
animated envelope of the Earth and its thinking envelope (i.e., be-
tween the Biosphere and the Noosphere), which is manifest in the
fundamentally different proceedings of Life on either side of this
gap between the two layers, naturally does not mean that the Hu-
man sprang into existence among the Living in an immediate state
of completeness. On the contrary.
In the first place, there is a wide zone of obscurity at the level
of the zoological surface of hominization, seemingly impenetrable
to our most searching methods of investigating the past, in which
we can discern almost no outward evidence of the distinction be-
tween Irreflection and Reflection, although this had already been
born. The human fetus in the earliest stages of its development,
when it is virtually incapable of morphological definition, is a case
in point. Even if by some inconceivable chance we were to come
upon their traces, can we be sure that we should be able to recog-
nize the first thinking beings, either by their bones or the products
of their activity?
And even if we confine ourselves to those increasingly well-
defined zones in which Mankind (become almost worldwide by the
beginning of the Quaternary era) spreads and grows as it ap-
proaches nearer to ourselves, the fact is surely undeniable — more-
ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD 273
over, it is a phenomenon loaded with consequences — that in a
Mankind in process of planetary expansion, the Human (or Re-
flective) behaves like a physical magnitude, not simply variable but
irresistibly rising: like a vapor which becomes increasingly gaseous
as it departs in a rising temperature from its point of liquefaction.
Let us note the two main phases, one anatomical, the other so-
cial, of this progressive transhominization.
a The anatomical phase. A question that has long been debated
among anthropologists is that of how far, given the osteological
characteristics of a particular cranium, it is possible to deduce, not
only the shape of the brain housed within the cranium, but the
particular kind of psychism contained in the brain. It is increas-
ingly clear that in the present state of our knowledge the process is
beset by innumerable pitfalls. Nevertheless, in certain cases and
within approximate limits, the attempt can yield useful results.
Generally speaking the brain of mammals, as hominization
takes place, not only suddenly increases its average size, and ex-
hibits a specific development in its frontal region, but also increases
what might be called its "compacity"; either structurally, by the
development of the areas of association included between the sen-
sory areas, or geometrically by the global folding back of the lobes
and hemispheres upon each other.
It seems logical, this being so, to distinguish osteologically, at
the beginning of anthropogenesis, a "prehominian" fossil stage
represented by crania markedly less curved upon themselves
(markedly less "globular") than is the case with modern man: a dis-
tinction which is borne out by the very significant fact that at this
prehominian stage Mankind seems to have been made up of a
more or less divergent sheaf of ethnic shoots ("subphyla"?), very
much more independent of one another than any racial groups
274 THE FUTURE OF MAN
have since been. These indications suggest that the Reflective ele-
ment, although already discernible in that remote period, had not
yet attained the degree of perfection in its functioning that it pos-
sesses today.
In fact, it is not until we reach the artist populations of the Up-
per Pleistocene period — the natural scientists' Homo sapiens — that
we really come, in a cerebral and phyletic sense, to the Human in
full course of organic consolidation upon itself.
b The Social Phase. I say deliberately "in full course" and not
"in a full state of completion": because (and this is what we must
realize) it is at this point, in order to ensure the continuance of the
process of hominization, that the social element subtly enters to
take the place of the "anatomical," whose advance is at least tem-
porarily arrested.
A great many of our contemporaries, perhaps the majority,
still regard the technico-cultural knitting together of human soci-
ety as a sort of para-biological epiphenomenon very inferior in or-
ganic value to other combinations achieved on the molecular or
cellular scale by the forces of Life. But in terms of sound science
this tendency to minimize its importance is wholly unwarrantable.
For if the distinguishing characteristic of authentically "vital"
arrangements of matter is that their "psychic temperature" rises
proportionately to their degree of complexity, how can we with-
hold the status of organisms (in the fullest sense) from the group-
ings, so strongly "psychogenic" in their nature, which are effected
within the human mass by the action of socialization?
By this interpretation, it seems to me, nothing is more wrong
than to treat the Human as though it has been biologically sta-
tionary since the ending of the Ice Age. It may be that to macro-
ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD 275
scopic observation nothing has changed during this period in the
generalized arrangement of the cerebral neurons. But on the other
hand, what an extraordinary and irreversible increase of collective
consciousness is manifest in the appearance, association and oppo-
sition of techniques, visions, passions and ideas! What an intensifi-
cation of reflective life!
Indeed the grand problem with which Man confronts the biol-
ogist is not that of deciding whether anthropogenesis has effec-
tively continued its physico-psychic progress during the past thirty
thousand years, since the answer to this is clearly evident. It is far
more a matter of determining whether, having reached the physi-
cal boundaries of its geographical expansion, Mankind may not be
in process of leveling out, its vitality undermined by the very ex-
cess of its dimensions.
And here a great surprise awaits us.
3. Growth of the Human:
The Modern Phase of Supercompresston
for us to regard present-day Mankind as socially complete, it
would be necessary for it, having achieved the limit of planetary
expansion as it has now done, to show an appreciable waning of its
power of numerical increase. But what we are witnessing is the ex-
act opposite. The statistics for a century past show no gradual sta-
bilization but an immense rise in the earth's population. It is as
though, being geographically compressed, Mankind were re-
bounding numerically upon itself; with the result that we can now
clearly see the tightly meshed mechanism which from the first, al-
though more or less obscurely, has governed its development.
At the beginning of the process we have increasingly severe de-
276 THE FUTURE OF MAN
mographic pressure, forcing the human mass to adapt itself as best
it can to the confined surface of the earth: an inescapable, mathe-
matical compression, of necessity entailing a concerted effort by
individuals to find means of organizing their communal lives by
arranging the world around them. So we have inventive effort and
in the end the growth of Reflection (i.e., that which is Human)
within the Noosphere: a growth which is again transformed (to the
degree in which the increasingly reflective and hominized individ-
ual acquires a larger radius of influence and greater powers of ac-
tion) into a further increase of planetary compression. So it goes
on: ever- tightening compression compelling ever more Reflec-
tion . . .
From the first beginnings of History, let me repeat, this princi-
ple of the compressive generation of consciousness has been cease-
lessly at work in the human mass. But from the moment — we have
just reached it! — when the compression of populations in the
teeming continents gains a decided ascendancy over their move-
ment of expansion upon the earth's surface, the process is natu-
rally speeded up to a staggering extent. We are today witnessing a
truly explosive growth of technology and research, bringing an in-
creasing mastery, both theoretical and practical, of the secrets and
sources of cosmic energy at every level and in every form; and,
correlative with this, the rapid heightening of what I have called
the psychic temperature of the earth. A single glance at the over-
all picture of surface chaos is enough to assure us that this is so. We
see a human tide bearing us upward with all the force of a con-
tracting star; it is not slack water, as we might have thought, but the
very crisis of the rising tide in full flood: the ineluctable growth on
our horizon of a true "Ultra-Human."
ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD 277
4. The Face of the Ultra-Human
clearly, IN THE light of what I have said, we have no grounds
for expecting any relaxation, still less any end, of the process of
compressive socialization which has now begun; and this being so
it is fruitless to seek to escape the whirlwind that is closing in on us.
What is of extreme importance, on the other hand, is that we
should know what course to steer, and how we must spiritually con-
duct ourselves if we are to ensure that the totalitarian embrace
which enfolds us will have the effect, not of dehumanizing us
through mechanization, but (as seems possible) of superhumaniz-
ing us by the intensification of our powers of understanding and
love.
The study of this vital question will enable us to define both
the physical conditions necessary to the realization of the Ultra-
Human and (to some extent!) its probable final aspect.
It may be said that for a long time, under pressure of the ex-
ternal forces engaged in concentrating it, the Human developed in
a fashion that was mainly automatic — spurred on principally, in
Bergson's expression, by a vis a tergo, a "push from behind." But
when intelligence, which originally, as has been well said, was sim-
ply a means of survival, became gradually elevated to the function
and dignity of a "reason for living," it was inevitable that, with the
accentuation of the forces of liberty, a profound modification
should become discernible in the working of anthropogenesis, and
one of which we are only now beginning to experience the full ef-
fects. No doubt it is true that certain inward necessities, persisting
in the most spiritualized recesses of our being, inexorably compel
us to continue our forward progress. What power on earth has ever
succeeded in arresting the growth of an idea or a passion, once
they have taken shape? But the fact remains that, as Reflection in-
278 THE FUTURE OF MAN
creases, there is added and allied to this basic determinism the pos-
sibility of Man's withdrawal or rejection of whatever does not ap-
pear to satisfy his heart or his reason. Which is to say that, given a
sufficient degree of hominization, the "planetary sequence" gen-
erating the Human can only continue to operate in an atmosphere
of consent — meaning, finally, under the impulsion of some desire.
So that in line with, and gradually replacing, the thrust from be-
low, we see the appearance of a force of attraction coming from
above which shows itself to be organically indispensable for the
continuance of the sequence, indispensable for the maintenance of
the evolutionary impetus, and also indispensable for the creation of
an atmosphere enveloping Mankind in process of totalization, of
psychic warmth and kindness without which Man's economic-
technological grip upon the World can only crush souls together,
without causing them to fuse and unite . . . The "pull" after the
"push," as the English would say.
But whence may we expect it to come, this mysterious and in-
dispensable force of attraction, exerting its radiance upon our
minds and hearts?
In broad terms it may be affirmed that the Human, by reason
of its structure, having become aware of its uncompleted state,
cannot submit without extreme reluctance, still less give itself with
passion, to the movement that is bearing it along unless there
be some kind of discernible and definitive consummation to be
looked for at the end, if only as a limit. Above all it rejects dispersal
and dissolution and the circle from which there is no escape. The
only air which Reflection can breathe must, of vital necessity, be
that of a psychically and physically convergent Universe. There must
be some peak, some revelation, some vivifying transformation at
the end of the journey. Ultimately, and even under the urge and
spur of material necessity, only a prospect, a hope of this kind is
capable of sustaining our forward progress to the end.
ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD 279
But how exactly are we to imagine it, how conceive it, this
awaited peak, this culmination of anthropogenesis, without which
we shall refuse, and ever more stubbornly, to move at all?
Here we are confronted by two partly divergent and opposed
answers: not merely theoretical and abstract solutions, but even-
tualities that have been slowly maturing in the experience of
Mankind throughout the ages, and have now been abruptly
brought into the daylight of our consciousness by the sudden
emergence of the totalizing forces to which we are compelled to
adapt ourselves.
According to the first answer (the "collectivist solution") it will
suffice to ensure the biological success of our evolution if the Hu-
man organizes itself gradually on a global scale in a sort of closed
circuit, within which each thinking element, intellectually and af-
fectively connected with every other, will attain to a maximum of
individual mastery by participating in a certain ultimate clarity of vi-
sion and extreme warmth of sympathy proper to the system as a
whole. A higher state of consciousness diffused through the ultra-
technified, ultra-socialized, ultra-cerebralized layers of the human
mass, but without the emergence (neither necessary nor conceiv-
able) at any point in the system of a universal, defined and au-
tonomous Center of Reflection: this, by the first hypothesis, is all
we are entitled to look for or desire as the eventual highest end of
hominization.
According to the second answer on the other hand (the
"personalist solution") a Center about which everything will be
grouped, a keystone of the vault at the summit of the human edi-
fice, is precisely what we must look for and postulate with all our
strength, in order that nothing may crumble. For according to the
supporters of this second theory, if a real power of love does not
indeed arise at the heart of Evolution, stronger than all individual
egotisms and passions, how can the Noosphere ever be stabilized?
280 THE FUTURE OF MAN
And if a nucleus of ultra-consistence does not emerge at the heart
of the cosmic movement, by its presence ensuring the ultimate
preservation of all the incommunicable sum of Reflection subli-
mated through the ages by anthropogenesis, how shall we be per-
suaded (even under the external pressure of planetary shrinkage)
to embark upon a journey leading to total Death? Indeed, to fuse
together the human multitude (even taken in its present state of su-
percompression) without crushing it, it seems essential that there
should be a field of attraction at once powerful and irreversible,
and such as cannot emanate collectively from a simple nebula of
reflecting atoms, but which requires as its source a self-subsisting,
strongly personalized star.
This, at least by implication, is the sense of Christian argument
and feeling during two thousand years. Moreover I am convinced
that it is a belief that the urgency of events will increasingly com-
pel biologists and psychologists to adopt. So that the greatest event
in the history of the Earth, now taking place, may indeed be the
gradual discovery, by those with eyes to see, not merely of Some
Thing but of Some One at the peak created by the convergence of
the evolving Universe upon itself.
£Y-
many people, of course, will hesitate to accompany me so far
in my inferences and predictions. But to keep within the bounds of
what is indisputable, it appears to me that from the facts I have set
forth above two conclusions emerge which must be accepted by
anyone who does not refuse to see what is happening in the world
today.
The first is that the Human (or, what comes to the same thing,
the Reflective) not only genuinely represents, in the physical sense,
ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD 281
a definite segregation of the "stuff of the cosmos" raised to a
higher (and ever-rising) state of complexity and consciousness; but
also that this separate Human element cannot achieve its final
equilibrium except by coiling and concentrating, through both
compulsion and attraction, on a planetary scale upon itself, until it
becomes a natural unity, organically and psychically indivisible.
The second conclusion is that, in terms of this ultimate state of
organization and interiorization, our present condition is still so
immature that Mankind in its existing form (and although there is
nothing more "adult" of its kind in the Universe with which, thus
far, we can compare it) cannot be scientifically regarded as any-
thing more than an organism which has not yet emerged from the
embryonic stage.
So that in any event, whether personally centered or acentered
in its eventual form (we may leave that question open) a vast realm
of the Ultra-Human lies ahead of us: a realm in which we shall not
be able to survive, or superlive, except by developing and embrac-
ing on earth, to the utmost extent, all the powers of common vi-
sion and unanimization that are available to us.
UNPUBLISHED. PARIS, JANUARY 6, I95O.
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