object:3.01 - Natural Morality
book class:Let Me Explain
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter
Part Three
Morality and Mysticism
i. Natural Morality
I. MORALITY
One of the most important aspects of hominization, from the
point of view of the history of life, is the accession of bio-
logical realities (or values) to the domain of moral realities
(or values). 1 (H.E., p. 29.)
Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the
individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to
be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt
the need to guard themselves against each other's encroach-
ments. And once an arrangement was in practice discovered
which more or less guaranteed to each one his due, this sys-
tem itself felt the need to guarantee itself against the changes
which would call its accepted solutions into question and
disturb the established social order. (H.E., pp. 105-6.)
In the widest sense of the word, we may give the name of
morality to every coherent system of action that is accepted
by necessity or convention. In the strict sense it is a coherent
system of action which must be universal (governing all
human activity) and categorical (involving some form of
obligation). (La Morale peut-elle se passer de souhassements meia-
physiques avoues ou inavoues, unpublished, 1945.)
II. OBLIGATION
Act we must - but why and how? 2
So long as our conceptions of the Universe remained
1 See above, 'Human Energy', p. 57.
2 Cf. The cosmic problem of action.
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Let Me Explain
static, the basis of duty remained extremely obscure. To
account for this mysterious law which weighs fundamentally
on our liberty, men had recourse to all sorts of explanations,
from that of an explicit command issued from outside to that
of an irrational but categorical instinct. In a spiritually evo-
lutionary scheme of the Universe, such as we have here
accepted, the answer is quite simple. For the human unity,
the initial basis of obligation is the fact of being born and
developing as a function of a cosmic stream. We must act, and
in a certain way, because our individual destinies are de-
pendent on a universal destiny. Duty, in its origin, is nothing
but the reflection of the universe in the atom. (H.E., p. 29. Last
sentence italicized by editor.)
III. MORALITY OF MOVEMENT AND MORALIZATION
Morality has till now been principally understood as a fixed
system of rights and duties intended to establish a static
equilibrium between individuals, and at pains to maintain it
by a limitation of energies, that is to say of force.
This conception rested in the last resort on the idea that
every human being represented a sort of absolute term in the
world, whose existence had to be protected from all en-
croachment from without. It is transformed from top to
bottom if one recognizes, as we have just done, that man on
earth is no more than an element destined to complete him-
self cosmically in a higher consciousness in process of forma-
tion. Now the problem confronting morality is no longer
how to reserve and protect the individual but how to guide
him so effectively in the direction of his anticipated fulfil-
ments that the 'quantity of personality' still diffuse in hu-
manity may be released in fullness and security. The moralist
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Morality and Mysticism
was up to now a jurist, or a tight-rope walker. He becomes
the technician and engineer of the spiritual energies of the
world. The highest morality is henceforth that which will
best develop the phenomenon of nature to its upper limits.
No longer to protect but to develop, by awakening and
convergence, the individual riches of the earth. (H.E., p.
106.)
And thus we discover the new idea of a moralization, to be
understood as the indefinitely continuous discovery and
conquest of the animate powers of the Earth. To the moral-
ity of balance ('closed morality') the moral world might
seem a definitely bounded realm. To the morality of move-
ment ('open morality') the same world appears as a higher
sphere of the universe, much richer than the lower spheres of
matter in unknown powers and unsuspected combinations.
The boldest mariners of tomorrow will sail out to explore
and humanize the mysterious ocean of moral energies. (H.E.,
p. 108.)
V. THE SPIRITUAL FUNCTION OF GOD
A morality of balance can be constructed and subsist closed
in on itself. Since it sets out only to adjust associated ele-
ments to one another, it is sufficiently determined and sus-
tained by a mutual agreement of the parties it reconciles. A
minimum of internal frictions in a regulated state is both the
ideal to which it tends and a sign that it has reached it.
In the morality of movement, on the contrary, which is
only defined by relation to a state or object to be reached, it
is imperative that the goal shall shine with enough light
to be desired and held in view. Examined in its external
development, the phenomenon of spirit appeared to us to
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depend on a common centre of total organization. Observed
now in its internal functioning, it brings us - as was inevit-
able - face to face with this pole of attraction and total de-
termination.
A morality of balance may logically be agnostic and en-
grossed in possession of the present moment. A morality
of movement necessarily inclines towards the future, in
pursuit of a God. (H.E., pp. 108-9.)
In short, humanity has reached the biological point where
it must either lose all belief in the universe or quite resolutely
worship it. (Ibid, pp. 109-10.)
The definitive discovery of the phenomenon of spirit is
accordingly bound up with the analysis (which science will
one day finally undertake) of the 'mystical phenomenon,
that is, of the love of God. (Ibid, p. 112.)
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