object:1.20 - HOW MAY WE CONCEIVE AND HOPE THAT HUMAN UNANIMIZATION WILL BE REALIZED ON EARTH?
book class:The Future of Man
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter
CHAPTER 20
HOW MAY WE CONCEIVE
AND HOPE THAT HUMAN
UNANIMIZATION WILL
BE REALIZED ON EARTH?
how depressing is the spectacle of the scat-
tered human mass! A turbulent ant hill of sepa-
rate elements whose most evident characteristic,
excepting certain limited cases of deep affinity
(married couples, families, the team, the mother
country) seems to be one of mutual repulsion,
whether between individuals or groups. Yet we
nurse in the depths of our minds and hearts the
conviction that it could be otherwise, that such
chaos and disorder are "against nature" inasmuch
as they prevent the realization, or delay the com-
ing, of a state of affairs which would multiply as
though to infinity our human powers of thought,
feeling and action.
Is the situation really desperate, or are there
reasons for believing in view of certain definite in-
dications, despite appearances to the contrary, that
Mankind as a whole is not only capable of una-
nimity but is actually in process of becoming truly
HOW MAY WE CONCEIVE AND HOPE 283
unanimized? Do there exist, in other words, certain planetary en-
ergies which, as a whole, overcoming the forces of repulsion that
seem to be incurably opposed to universal human harmony, are
tending inexorably to bring together and organize upon itself (un-
believable though this may seem) the terrifying multitude of thou-
sands of millions of thinking consciousnesses which forms the
"reflective layer" of the earth?
My object here is to show that such energies do exist.
They are of two kinds: forces of compression, which by exter-
nal and internal determinisms bring about a first stage of enforced
unification; and subsequently forces of attraction, which through
the action of internal affinity effect a genuine unanimization by
free consent.
Let us look in turn at these two processes which so universally
pervade the human atmosphere that, like light and air, we often
tend to ignore them, although they envelop us so closely that no act
of ours can escape them.
1. Unification by Force or Compression:
The Geographical and the Mental Curvatures
a The Geographical Curvature. Biologically speaking the human
zoological group is developing on a closed surface. More exactly,
since although the world population has already virtually filled the
continents to saturation-point it shows no sign of leveling out but
continues to increase at an ever-growing rate, the group behaves as
though it were developing in a world that is continually shrinking,
so that it becomes ever more tightly compressed upon itself.
The first and obvious effect of this tremendous ethnic compres-
sion is to bring bodies relentlessly together. But the growing density
284 THE FUTURE OF MAN
of human stuff, however material its origin, is also having a pro-
found effect on human souls. In order to respond vitally and adapt
itself comfortably to the increasing pressure, in order to survive and
enjoy well-being the multitude of thinking beings reacts naturally by
arranging itself 2& well as possible, economically and technologically,
upon itself. This automatically compels it to be constantly inventing
new systems of mechanical equipment and social organization. In
other words it is forced to reflect; and this causes it to reflect a little
more upon itself, that is to say to develop further in itself those qual-
ities which are specifically and in a higher sense human.
It is a profoundly instructive and mysterious phenomenon.
The human mass is spiritually warmed and illumined by the iron
grip of planetary compression; and the warming, whereby the rays
of individual interaction expand, induces a further increase, in a
kind of recoil, of the compression which was its cause . . . and so
on, in a chain-reaction of increasing rapidity.
Out of this there arises first an irresistible grouping principle
which, in its impact on the intelligence, almost automatically over-
rules the egoistical and mutually repulsive tendencies of the hu-
man individual.
But that is not all: for to this first geographical compression
there is rapidly added a tightening effect, due this time to the
emergence and influence of a curvature which is not geometric but
mental^ and which I must now explain.
b The Mental Curvature. In the "humanizing" chain of events
which we have disclosed and described, the mind, which at first
seemed to be no more than a "device" for confronting and resisting
planetary compression, is very soon automatically transformed into a
"reason" of existence. We think first in order to survive, and then we
live in order to think: such is the fundamental law of anthropogene-
sis which emerges. But Thought, once it is let loose, displays an ex-
HOW MAY WE CONCEIVE AND HOPE 285
traordinary power of self-protraction and extension, as though it
were an independent organism which, being once born, cannot be
restrained from growing and propagating itself and absorbing every-
thing into its network. All history bears witness to the fact that noth-
ing has ever been able to prevent an idea from growing and spreading
and finally becoming universal. The reflective, psychic environment
which surrounds us is so constituted that we cannot remain in it with-
out moving forward; and we cannot advance except by drawing
closer and rubbing shoulders with one another. It is as though all our
individual strivings after more truth soared upward into a mental
"cupola" whose closed walls inexorably compel our minds to mingle!
An enforced coalescence of all Thought in the sum total of
itself . . .
The increasingly apparent growth, overriding the monstrous
and chaotic human dispersal which so distresses us, of this force of
auto-unification emerging from the psychic energies released by
the technico-social concretion of the earth: this surely is a guaran-
tee that, within our universe, the impulse of totalization must even-
tually triumph over the impulses of dispersal.
Assuredly. But on one condition. Under the influence of eco-
nomic forces and the intellectual reasons invoked to break down
the barriers behind which our egotism shelters, there must emerge,
since this alone can be completely unanimizing, the sense of a sin-
gle, fundamental aspiration.
2. Free Unification Through Attraction:
A Point of Universal Convergence on the Horizon
despite THE compulsions, both geographical and psychic,
which oblige men to live and think in an ever closer community,
they do not necessarily love each other the more on that account —
286 THE FUTURE OF MAN
far from it. The two greatest scientists in the world, being preoc-
cupied with the same problem, may nonetheless detest each other.
This is a strange and sad fact of which we are all aware, and be-
cause of this separation of head and heart we are bound to con-
clude that, however social necessity and logic may impel it from
behind, the human mass will only become thoroughly unified un-
der the influence of some form of affective energy which will place
the human particles in the fortunate position of being unable to
love and fulfill themselves individually except by contributing in
some degree to the love and fulfillment of all: to the extent, that is
to say, that all are equal and integral parts of a single universe that
is vitally converging. A "pull," in other words, must be born of the
"push." 1 But amid the politico-social crisis which now besets us,
have we valid, objective reasons for believing in the possibility of
this happy state of affairs, even to the point of discerning its first
indications?
I believe we have, on the following grounds.
If we look for the principal outcome, "Result No. i," of the in-
eluctable scientific unification of our intellects during the past cen-
tury, we must quickly perceive that the gain consists far less in our
securing control of any particular source of natural energy than in
the general awakening of our consciousness to the vast and ex-
treme organicity of the universe as a whole, considered in terms of
its internal forces of development. We see more clearly with every
increase in our knowledge that we are, all of us, participants in
a process (Cosmogenesis culminating in Anthropogenesis) upon
which our ultimate fulfillment — one might even say, our beatifica-
tion — obscurely depends. And whence can it arise, this accumula-
tion of evidence that the extreme point of each of us (our
1 Teilhard uses the English words.
HOW MAY WE CONCEIVE AND HOPE 287
ultra-ego, it might be termed) coincides with some common fulfill-
ment of the evolutionary process, a common super-ego, except out
of the principle of attraction which we have postulated and in-
voked above as being necessary to make the rebellious nuclei of
our individual personalities cohere from within, to instil unanimity
even in their hearts?
Thus, superimposed on the twofold tightening action of what
I have called the geometrical and mental curvatures of the hu-
man earth — superimposed and emanating from them — we have a
third and final unifying influence brought to bear in regulating
the movements of the Noosphere, that of a destiny that is
supremely attractive, the same for all at the same time. A total
community of desire, which makes of it a third force as planetary
in its dimensions as the other two, but operating, no matter how
irresistibly, in the manner of a seduction — that is to say, by free
consent.
It would be premature to assert that this new force as yet plays
any very explicit part in the course of political or social events
around us. Yet may we not claim, observing the precipitate growth
and succession of democracies and totalitarian regimes during the
past hundred and fifty years in the history of the world, that it is
the Sense of the Species, which for a time seemed to have vanished
from the depths of our hearts, dispelled in some sort by the growth
of Reflection, that is now gradually resuming its place and re-
asserting its rights over all narrow individualism? The Sense of the
Species interpreted in the new, grand human manner: not, as for-
merly, a shoot which merely seeks to prolong itself until it bears its
fruit, but the fruit itself, gathering and growing upon itself in the
expectation of eventual ripeness.
But if the hope of this maturing of the Species, and the belief
in its coming, are to illumine and truly unanimize our hearts, we
288 THE FUTURE OF MAN
must endow it with certain positive attributes. It is here that opin-
ions are divided.
Those who think on Marxist lines believe that all that is neces-
sary to inspire and polarize the human molecules is that they
should look forward to an eventual state of collective reflection and
sympathy, at the culmination of anthropogenesis, from which all
will benefit through participation: as it were, a vault of mutually re-
inforced thoughts, a closed circuit of attachments in which the in-
dividual will achieve intellectual and affective fulfillment to the
extent that he is one with the whole system.
But in the Christian view only the eventual appearance, at the
summit and in the heart of the unified world, of an autonomous
center of congregation is structurally and functionally capable of
inspiring, preserving and fully releasing, within a human mass still
spiritually dispersed, the looked-for forces of unanimization. Ac-
cording to the supporters of this hypothesis only a veritable
super-love, the attractive power of a veritable "super-being," can of
psychological necessity dominate, possess and synthesize the host
of other earthly loves. Failing such a center of universal conver-
gence, not metaphorical or potential but real, there can be no true
coherence among totalized Mankind, and therefore no true con-
sistence. A world culminating in the Impersonal can bring us nei-
ther the warmth of attraction nor the hope of irreversibility
(immortality) without which individual egotism will always have
the last word. A veritable Ego at the summit of the world is needed
for the consummation, without confounding them, of all the ele-
mental egos of Earth ... I have talked of the "Christian view," but
this idea is gaining ground in other circles. Was it not Camus who
wrote in Sisyphe, "If Man found that the Universe could love he
would be reconciled"? And did not Wells, through his exponent
the humanitarian biologist Steele in The Anatomy of Frustration, ex-
HOW MAY WE CONCEIVE AND HOPE 289
press his need to find, above and beyond humanity, a "universal
lover"?
Let me recapitulate and conclude.
Essentially, in the twofold irresistible embrace of a planet that
is visibly shrinking, and Thought that is more and more rapidly
coiling in upon itself, the dust of human units finds itself subjected
to a tremendous pressure of coalescence, far stronger than the in-
dividual or national repulsions that so alarm us. But despite the
closing of this vise nothing seems finally capable of guiding us into
the natural sphere of our interhuman affinities except the emer-
gence of a powerful field of internal attraction, in which we shall
find ourselves caught from within. The rebirth of the Sense of
Species, rendered virtually inevitable by the phase of compressive
and totalizing socialization which we have now entered, affords a
first indication of the existence of such a field of unanimization
and a clue to its nature.
Nevertheless, however efficacious this newly born faith of Man
in the ultra-human may prove to be, it seems that Man's urge
toward Some Thing ahead of him cannot achieve its full fruition ex-
cept by combining with another and still more fundamental aspi-
ration — one from above, urging him toward Some One.
UNPUBLISHED. PARIS, JANUARY l8, I95O.
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