object:4.02 - Humanity in Progress
book class:Hymn of the Universe
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
class:chapter
HUMANITY IN PROGRESS
20
The world is abuilding. This is the basic truth
which must first be understood so thoroughly that
it becomes an habitual and as it were natural
springboard for our thinking. At first sight, beings
and their destinies might seem to us to be scattered
haphazard or at least in an arbitrary fashion over
the face of the earth; we could very easily suppose
that each of us might equally well have been born
Pemdes 93
earlier or later, at this place or that, happier or more
ill-starred, as though the universe from the begin-
ning to end of its history formed in space-time a
sort of vast flowerbed in which the flowers could be
changed about at the whim of the gardener. But
this ilea is surely untenable. The more one reflects,
with the help of all that science, philosophy and re-
ligion can teach us, each in its own field, the more
one comes to realize that the world should be lik-
ened not to a bundle of elements artificially held
together but rather to some organic system ani-
mated by a broad movement of development which
is proper to itself. As the centuries go by it seems
that a comprehensive plan is indeed being slowly
carried out around us. A process is at work in the
universe, an issue is at stake, which can best be
compared to the processes of gestation and birth;
the birth of that spiritual reality which is formed
by souls and by such material reality as their
existence involves. Laboriously, through and thanks
to the activity of mankind, the new earth is being
formed and purified and is taking on definition and
clarity. No, we are not like the cut flowers that
make up a bouquet: we are like the leaves and
buds of a great tree on which everything appears at
its proper time and place as required and deter-
mined by the good of the whole.
Human suffering, the sum total of suffering poured
out at each moment over the whole earth, is like an
immeasurable ocean. But what makes up this im-
94 Hymn of the Universe
mensity? Is it blackness, emptiness, barren wastes?
No, indeed: it is potential energy. Suffering holds
hidden within it, in extreme intensity, the ascen-
sional force of the world. The whole point is to set
this force free by making it conscious of what it
signifies and of what it is capable. For if all the sick
people in the world were simultaneously to turn
their sufferings into a single shared longing for the
speedy completion of the kingdom of God through
the conquering and organizing of the earth, what a
vast leap towards God the world would thereby
make! If all those who suffer in the world were to
unite their sufferings so that the pain of the world
should become one single grand act of conscious-
ness, of sublimation, of unification, would not this
be one of the most exalted forms in which the mys-
terious work of creation could be manifested to our
eyes?
22
Lord, that I might hold to you the more closely, I
would that my consciousness were as wide as the
skies and the earth and the peoples of the earth; as
deep as the past, the desert, the ocean; as tenuous
as the atoms of matter or the thoughts of the
human heart.
Must I not adhere to you everywhere throughout
the entire extent of the universe?
In order that I may not succumb to the tempta-
tion that lies in wait for every act of boldness, nor
ever forget that you alone must be sought in and
through everything, I know, Lord, that you will
PensSes 95
send me — at what moments only you know — depri-
vations, disappointments, sorrow. The object of my
love will fall away from me, or I shall outgrow it
The flower I held in my hands withered in my
hands. ...
At the turn of the lane the wall rose up before
me. • • •
Suddenly between the trees I saw the end of the
forest which I thought had no end. . . •
The testing-time had come ...
... But it did not bring me unalleviated sor-
row. On the contrary, a glorious, unsuspected joy
invaded my soul: because, in the collapse of those
immediate supports I had risked giving to my life,
I knew with a unique experiential certainty that I
would never again rely for support on anything
save your own divine stability.
23
The development in our souls of supernatural life
(based on the natural spiritualization of the world
through the efforts of mankind) : this in the last re-
sort is the field where the operative power of faith
is positively and without any known limits exer-
cised.
Within the universe it is spirit, and within spirit
it is the moral sphere, that are par excellence the
actual subjects of the development of life. Conse-
quently it is there, on that plastic center of our-
selves where divine grace mingles with earthly
drives, that the power of faith should be brought
vigorously to bear.
96 Hymn of the Universe
There above all, surely, creative energy awaits
us, ready to work in us a transformation beyond
anything that human eye has seen or ear heard.
Who can say what God would fashion out of us if,
trusting in his word, we dared to follow his coun-
sels to the very end and surrender ourselves to his
providence?
Let us then, for love of our Creator and of the
universe, throw ourselves fearlessly into the cruci-
ble of the world of tomorrow.
In brief, there are three characteristics of the
Christian fulfillment of this process of life develop-
ment, brought about by faith:
first, it is effected without any distortion or dis-
ruption of any particular determinism: for events
are not, in general, deflected from their course of
prayer but are integrated into a new arrangement
of the totality of forces;
secondly, it is manifested, not necessarily on the
plane of natural human achievement, but in the
order of supernatural growth to holiness;
thirdly, in real fact it has God as at once its prin-
cipal agent, its source and its milieu.
With this triple reservation, which marks it off
clearly from natural faith in its mode of operation,
Christian faith can be said to manifest itself as, in
the most realistic and comprehensive sense, a "cos-
mic energy."
24
Within a universe which is structurally convergent
the only possible way for one element to draw
PensSes 97
closer to other, neighboring elements is by condens-
ing the cone: that is, by driving towards the point
of convergence the whole area of the world in
which it is involved. In such a system it is impossi-
ble to love one's neighbor without drawing close
to God — and vice versa for that matter, lids we
know well enough. But it is also impossible— and
this is less familiar to us— to love either God or our
neighbor without being obliged to help in the prog-
ress of the earthly synthesis of spirit in its physical
totality, for it is precisely the advances made in this
movement of synthesis that permit us to draw close
to one another and at the same time raise us up to-
wards God. Thus, because we love, and in order to
love more, we find ourselves happily reduced to
sharing— we more and better than anyone— in all
the struggles, all the anxieties, all the aspirations,
and also all the affections, of the earth in so far as
M these contain within them a principle of ascen-
sion and synthesis.
This breadth of outlook does not involve any
modification whatsoever of Christian poverty of
spirit* But instead of having things behind* it
carries them onwards; instead of cutting down it
raises up: it is a question now not of a breaking
away but of a crossing over, not a flight but an
emergence. Without ceasing to be itself, charity
enlarges its scope to become an upward-lifting
force, a common essence, at the heart of every form
* I have used this phrase to translate d&achement in order
to avoid the infelicitous and possibly gravely misleading
overtones (suggestive of the "couldn't care less" attitude)
of "detachment.*'
98 Hymn of the Universe
of human endeavor, whose diversity tends in conse-
quence to be drawn together in synthesis into the
rich totality of a single operation. Like Christ him-
self and in imitation of him it becomes universal,
dynamic and, for that very reason, fully human.
In short, in order to correspond to the new curve
of the flow, Christianity is led to the discovery,
below God, of earthly values, while humanism is
led to the discovery, above the world, of the place
of a God
25
Joy is above all the fruit of having come face to
face with a universal and enduring reality to which
one can refer and as it were attach those fragmen-
tary moments of happiness that, being successive
and fugitive, excite the heart without satisfying it
The mystic suffers more than other men from the
tendency of created things to crumble into dust: in-
stinctively and obstinately he searches for the sta-
ble, the unfailing, the absolute . . .
This crumbling away, which is the mark of the
corruptible and the precarious, is to be seen every-
where. And yet everywhere there are traces of, and
a yearning for, a unique support, a unique and ab-
solute soul, a unique reality in which other realities
are brought together in synthesis, as stable and uni-
versal as matter, as simple as spirit.
One must have felt deeply the pain of being
plunged into that multiplicity which swirls about
one and slips through one's fingers if one is to be
worthy of experiencing the rapture that transports
PensSes 99
the soul when, through the influence of the univer-
sal Presence, it perceives that reality has become
not merely transparent but solidly enduring. For
this means that the incorruptible principle of the
universe is now and for ever found, and that it ex-
tends everywhere: the world is fitted, and filled
with the Absolute. To see this is to be made free.
26
Mane nobiscum Domine, quoniam advesperascit*
Assimilate, utilize, the shadows of later life: en-
feeblement, loneliness, the sense that no further ho-
rizons lie ahead. . • •
Discover in Christ-Omega** how to remain
young: gay, enthusiastic, full of enterprise.
Beware of thinking that every form of melan-
choly, indifference, disenchantment is to be iden-
tified with wisdom.
Make a place, and an upward-lifting place, for
the end which now draws near and for the decline
of one's powers to whatever degree God may will.
"To be ready" has never seemed to mean any-
thing to me but this : "To be straining f orwards."
*"Stay with us, because it is towards evening." (Luke
24.29.)
** Omega: the end-point of cosmogenesis, the culmination
of the process of hominization or spiritualization, where per-
sonal and universal meet in the Supra-Personal — a point
therefore which is not simply the end of the whole process,
the last term in its series, but is outside all series, autono-
mous and transcendent, and so is identified with God, the
Center of centers, and with the Totus Christus, (Tr. note.)
100 Hymn of the Universe
May Christ-Omega keep me always young— ad
majoremDei gloriam* (And what better argument
for Christianity could there be than an enduring
youthfulness drawn from Christ-Omega?)
For
old age comes from him,
old age leads on to him, and
old age will touch me only in so far as he wills.
To be "young" means to be hopeful, energetic,
smiling— and clear-sighted.
Accept death in whatever guise it may come to
me in Christ-Omega, that is, within the process of
the development of life.
A smile (inward and outward) means facing
with sweetness and gentleness whatever befalls
one.
Jesus-Omega, grant me to serve you, to proclaim
you, to glorify you, to make you manifest, to the
very end, through all the time that remains to me of
life, and above all through my death.
Desperately, Lord Jesus, I commit to your care
my last active years, and my death: do not let them
impair or spoil the work I have so dreamed of
achieving for you.
The grace to end well, in the way that will best
advance the glory of Christ-Omega: this is the
grace of graces.
Live under the exclusive dominance of a single
passion: the impassioned desire to help forward the
synthesis of Christ and the universe. This implies
* "To the greater gloiy of God."
Pensies 101
love of both, and more especially love of the su-
preme axis, Christ and the Church.
Communion in and through death: to die a com-
munion-death.
What comes to one at the very end: the adorable.
I go forward to meet him who comes.
27
Many people suppose that the superiority of spirit
would be jeopardized if its first manifestation were
not accompanied by some interruption of the nor-
mal advance of the world One ought rather to say
that precisely because it is spirit its appearance
must take the form of a crowning achievement, or a
blossoming. But leaving aside all thought of sys-
tematization, is it not true that every day a multi-
tude of human souls are created in the course of an
embryogenic process in which scientific observation
will never be able to detect any break however
small in the chain of biological phenomena? Thus
we have daily before our eyes an example of an act
of creation winch is absolutely imperceptible to,
and beyond the reach of, science as such. Why then
make so many difficulties when it is a question of
the first man? Obviously it is much more difficult
for us to imagine the first appearance of reflective
thought at some point in the history of a phylum or
race made up of different individuals than at some
point in the series of states making up the life of
one and the same embryo. But from the viewpoint
of creative activity considered in relationship to
102 Hymn of the Universe
phenomena, ontogenesis and phylogenesis are in
like case. Why not admit, for example, that the ab-
solutely free and special act whereby the Creator
willed humanity to be the crown of his work so
profoundly influenced and organized beforehand
the progress of the world prior to man's coming
that now this coming seems to us, in accordance
with the Creator s choice, to be the natural out-
come of all the precedent processes of life-
development? Omnia propter hominem*
28
If, on the tree of life, the mammals form a domi-
nant branch, indeed the dominant branch, then the
primates (that is, the cerebro-mammals) are its
leading shoot, and the anthropoids are the bud in
which the shoot ends.
Hence, we may go on to say, it is easy for us to
judge at what point in the biosphere we must fix
our gaze in expectation of what is yet to come. Ev-
erywhere, as we are well aware, the lines of active
phyletic development grow warm with conscious-
ness as they approach the summit; but in one
clearly-marked region at the center of the kingdom
of mammals, where the most powerful brains ever
fashioned by nature are to be found, the lines glow
red-hot; and already at the heart of this region
there burns a point of incandescence.
It is this line that we must always hold in our
gaze, this line glowing crimson with the dawn light.
* "All things are for man's sake."
PensSes 103
The flame that for thousands of years has been
rising up below the horizon is now, at a strictly lo-
calized point, about to burst forth: thought has
been born.
29
Beings endowed with self-awareness become, pre-
cisely in virtue of that bending back upon
themselves, immediately capable of rising into a
new sphere of existence: in truth another world is
born. Abstract thought, logic, reasoned choice and
invention, mathematics, art, the exact computation
of space and time, the dreams and anxieties of love:
all these activities of the inner life are simply the
bubbling up of the newly formed life-center as it
explodes upon itself ,
This being said, a question arises. If it is in fact
the attainment of "self-consciousness" that consti-
tutes true "intelligence," can we seriously doubt
that intelligence is the evolutionary prerogative of
man alone? And, if it is, can we allow some sort of
false modesty to hinder us from recognizing that
man's possession of it shows him as representing a
radical advance on all precedent forms of life? Cer-
tainly animals know; but equally certainly they
cannot know that they know: otherwise they would
long since have multiplied inventions and devel-
oped a system of internal constructions which
could not have escaped our observation. Hence a
whole domain of reality is closed to them, beyond
all possibility of access: a domain in which we for
our part can move about freely. They are separated
104 Hymn of the Universe
from us by an abyss — or a threshold — which they
can never cross. Reflective consciousness makes us
not merely different from them but wholly other: it
is a difference not merely of degree but of kind: a
change of nature, resulting from a change of state.
And so we reach precisely the conclusion we had
anticipated: since the development of life means
the rise and growth of consciousness, that develop-
ment could not continue indefinitely along its own
line without a transformation in depth: like all
great developments in the world, life had to be-
come different in order to remain itself.
30
It was a joy to me, Lord, in the midst of my strug-
gles, to feel that in growing to my own fulfillment I
was increasing your hold on me; it was a joy to me,
beneath the inward burgeoning of life and amidst
the unfolding of events that favored me, to surren-
der myself to your providence. And now that I
have discovered the joy of turning every increase
into a way of making— or allowing — your presence
to grow within me, I beg of you: bring me to a se-
rene acceptance of that final phase of communion
with you in which I shall attain to possession of
you by diminishing within you.
Now that I have learnt to see you as he who is
"more me than myself," grant that when my hour
has come I may recognize you under the appear-
ances of every alien or hostile power that seems
bent on destroying or dispossessing me. When the
erosions of age begin to leave their mark on my
PensSes 105
body, and still more on my mind; when the ills that
must diminish my life or put an end to it strike me
down from without or grow up from within me;
when I reach that painful moment at which I sud-
denly realize that I am a sick man or that I am grow-
ing old; above all at that final moment when I feel
I am losing hold on myself and becoming wholly
passive in the hands of those great unknown forces
which first formed me: at all these somber mo-
ments grant me, Lord, to understand that it is you
(provided my faith is strong enough) who are pain-
fully separating the fibers of my being so as to pen-
etrate to the very marrow of my substance and
draw me into yourself .
The more deeply and incurably my ills become
engrained in my flesh, the more it may be you
yourself that I am harboring as a loving, active
principle of purification and of liberation from pos-
sessiveness. The more the future lies ahead of me
like a dark tunnel or a dizzy abyss, the more confi-
dent I can be — if I go forward boldly, relying on
your word — of being lost, of being engulfed, in
you, Lord, of being absorbed into your Body,
Lord Christ, you who are divine energy and liv-
ing, irresistible might: since of the two of us it is
you who are infinitely the stronger, it is you who
must set me ablaze and transmute me into fire thkt
we may be welded together and made one. Grant
me, then, something even more precious than that
grace for which all your faithful followers pray: to
receive communion as I die is not sufficient: teach
me to make a communion of death itself.
106 Hymn of the Universe
31
No mechanism of evolution could gain a hold on an
entirely passive (or a fortiori resistant) cosmic ma-
terial. Hence we cannot fail to see the drama inher-
ent in the possibility that mankind might suddenly
lose all desire to achieve its destiny. Such a disen-
chantment would be conceivable, would indeed be
inevitable, if as a result of increasing reflection we
came to see that in a hermetically closed world we
were destined one day to end up in a total collec-
tive death. In the face of this terrifying fact, is it
not clear that despite the most violent pull from the
winding-chain of planetary development the psy-
chic mechanism of evolution would come to a dead
stop, its very substance stretched to breaking point
and finally disintegrating?
The more one reflects on this eventuality — and
certain morbid symptoms such as the existentialism
of Sartre prove that it is no mere fantasy — the more
one comes to the conclusion that the great enigma
presented to our minds by the phenomenon of man
is not so much how life could ever have been kin-
dled on earth as how it could ever be extinguished
on earth without finding some continuance else-
where. For once life has become reflective con-
sciousness it cannot in fact accept utter extinction
without biologically contradicting itself.
Consequently one feels less inclined to reject as
unscientific the idea that the critical point of plane-
tary reflective consciousness which is the result of
the forming of humanity into an organized society,
far from being a mere spark in the darkness, corre-
Penstes 107
sponds on the contrary to our passage (by a move-
ment of reversal or dematerialization) to another
face of the universe: not an ending of the ultrahu-
man but its arrival at something transhuman at the
very heart of reality,
32
For one who sees the universe in the guise of a la-
borious communal ascent towards the summit of
consciousness, life, far from seeming blind, hard or
despicable, becomes charged with gravity, with
responsibilities, with new relationships. Sir Oliver
Lodge very justly remarked not so long ago that,
properly understood, the doctrine of evolution is a
"school of hope" — and, let us add, a school of ever
greater mutual charity and ever greater effort
So much so that all along the line one can up-
hold, and without paradox, the following thesis
(which is doubtless the one best calculated to reas-
sure and guide men's minds when confronted with
the growth of transformist views): transformism
does not necessarily open the way to an invasion of
spirit by matter; rather does it give evidence in
favor of an essential triumph of spirit. Transform-
ism as well as, if not better than, the theory of
"fixed types" can give to the universe that grandeur
and depth and unity which are the natural atmos-
phere for Christian faith.
And this last consideration leads us to formulate
the following general conclusion:
whatever we Christians may say in the last resort
about transformism or about any other of the new
108 Hymn of the Universe
theories which attract the modern mind, let us
never give the impression of being timid about any-
thing that can bring fresh light and greater breadth
to our ideas concerning man and the universe. The
world will never be vast enough, nor humanity
powerful enough, to be worthy of him who created
them and is incarnate in them.
33
Is life an open road or a blind alley? This question,
barely formulated a few centuries ago, is today ex-
plicitly on the lips of mankind as a whole. As a re-
sult of the brief , violent moment of crisis in which
it became conscious at once of its creative power
and of its critical faculties, humanity has quite le-
gitimately become hard to move: no stimulus at the
level of mere instinct or blind economic necessity
will suffice for long to goad it into moving onwards.
Only a reason, and a valid and important reason,
for loving life passionately will cause it to advance
further. But where, at the experiential level, are we
to find, if not a complete justification, at least the
beginnings of a justification of life? Only, it would
seem, in the consideration of the intrinsic value of
the phenomenon of man. Continue to regard man
as an accidental outgrowth or sport of nature and
you will drive him into a state of disgust or revolt
which, if it became general, would mean the defini-
tive stoppage of life on earth. Recognize, on the
other hand, that within the domain of our expe-
rience man is at the head of one of the two greatest
waves into which, for us, tangible reality is divided,
PensSes 109
and that therefore he holds in his hands the for-
tunes of the universe: and immediately you cause
him to turn his face towards the grandeur of a new
sunrise.
Man has every right to be anxious about his fate
so long as he feels himself to be lost and lonely in
the midst of the mass of created things. But let him
once discover that his fate is bound up with the
fate of nature itself, and immediately, joyously, he
will begin again his forward march. For it would
denote in him not a critical sense but a malady of
the spirit if he were doubtful of the value and the
hopes of an entire world.
34
It is easy for the pessimist to belittle that extraordi-
nary period of history during which in the space of
a few thousand years civilizations crumbled one
after another into ruin. But it is surely far more
scientific to discern once again, beneath these suc-
cessive waxings and wanings, the great spiral of life
always irreversibly ascending, but by stages, along
the dominant line of its evolution. Susa, Memphis,
Athens may crumble: but an ever more highly or-
ganized awareness of the universe is passed on
from hand to hand and increases with each succes-
sive stage in clarity and brilliance.
When we are dealing in general with the gradual
development of the noosphere into planetary con-
sciousness we must of course do full justice to the
great, the essential part played by the other sec-
tions of the human race in bringing about the
110 Hymn of the Universe
eventual plenitude of the earth. But in dealing
with this historical period we should be allowing
sentiment to falsify fact if we refused to recognize
that during its centuries the principal axis of an-
thropogenesis has passed through the West It was
in this ardent zone of growth and universal recast-
ing that all that makes man what he is today was
discovered — or at least must have been rediscov-
ered, for even those things which had long been
known elsewhere achieved their definitive human
value only when they were incorporated into the
system of European ideas and activities. We are
not being merely naive if we hail as a great event
the discovery by Columbus of America.
The fact is that during the last six thousand
years, in the Mediterranean area, a neohumanity
has been germinating and is now at this moment
completing its absorption into itself of the re-
maining vestiges of the neolithic mosaic of ethnic
groupings, so as to form a new layer, of greater
density than all the others, on the noosphere.
And the proof of this is that today, in order to re-
main human or to become more fully human, all
the peoples from end to end of the earth are being
inexorably led to formulate the world's hopes and
problems in the very terms devised by the West
35
Let us admit this frankly, once and for all: what
most discredits faith in progress in the eyes of men
today, over and above its reticences and its help-
lessness in meeting the cry of the 'last days of the
Penstes 111
human species," is the unfortunate tendency still
shown by its adepts to distort into pitiful millenary
anisms all that is most valid and most noble in our
now permanently awakened expectation of the fu-
ture appearance of some form of "ultrahumanity*
An era of abundance and euphoria — a Golden Age
— is, they suggest, all that evolution could hold in
reserve for us. And it is but right that our hearts
should sink at the thought of so "bourgeois" an
ideal.
In face of this strictly "pagan" materialism and
naturalism it becomes a pressing duty to remind
ourselves once again that, if the laws of biogenesis
of their nature suppose and effectively bring about
an economic improvement in human living condi-
tions, it is not any question of well-being, it is
solely a thirst for greater being that by psychologi-
cal necessity can save the thinking world from the
taedium tdtae.
And here we can see with complete clarity the
importance of the idea, suggested above, that it is
at its point or superstructure of spiritual concentra-
tion and not at its base or infrastructure of material
arrangement that humanity must biologically es-
tablish its equilibrium.
For once we admit, following this life of argu-
ment, the existence of a critical point of species-
formation* at the end of the evolution of technical
developments and civilizations, we realize that
what finally opens out at the peak of time (main-
taining to the end the priority of tension over rest
*Fr. spSciation. (Tr. note.)
112 Hymn of the Universe
in biogenesis) is an issue: an issue not merely for
our hopes of escape but also for our awaiting of
some revelation.
And this is exactly what could best relieve that
tension between light and darkness, exaltation and
anguish, into which a renewed awareness of our
human species has plunged us.
36
Fold your wings, my soul, those wings you had
spread wide to soar to the terrestrial peaks where
the light is most ardent: it is for you simply to
await the descent of the Fire — supposing it to be
willing to take possession of you.
If you would attract its power to yourself you
must first loosen the bonds of affection which still
tie you to objects cherished too exclusively for their
own sake. The true union you ought to seek with
creatures that attract you is to be found not by
going directly to them but by converging with
them on God sought in and through them. It is not
by making themselves more material, relying solely
on physical contacts, but by making themselves
more spiritual in the embrace of God that things
draw closer to each other and, following their in-
vincible natural bent, end by becoming, all of them
together, one. Therefore, my soul, be chaste.
And when you have thus refined your crude ma-
teriality you must loosen yet further the fibers of
your substance. In your excessive self-love you are
like a molecule closed in upon itself and incapable
of entering easily into any new grouping. God looks
PensSes 113
to you to be more open and more pliant If you are
to enter into Him you need to be freer and more
eager. Have done then with your egoism and your
fear of suffering. Love others as you love yourself,
that is to say admit them into yourself, all of them,
even those whom, if you were a pagan, you would
exclude. Accept pain. Take up your cross, my
soul. • o »
37
We always tend to forget that the supernatural is &
leaven, a life-principle, not a complete organism.
Its purpose is to transform "nature"; and it cannot
do that apart from the material with which nature
presents it If the Hebrews kept their gaze fixed for
three thousand years on the coming of the Messiah
it was because they saw him effulgent with the
glory of their own people. If St Paul's disciples
lived in a constant eager yearning for the great day
of the second coming of Christ it was because they
looked to the Son of Man to give them a personal,
tangible solution to the problems and the injustices
of earthly life. The expectation of heaven cannot be
kept alive unless it is made flesh. With what body,
then, shall our own be clothed?
With an immense, completely human hope,
38
You whose loving wisdom fashions my being out of
all the forces and all the hazards of earth, teach me
to adopt here and now, however clumsily, an atti-
114 Hymn of the Universe
tude the full efficacy of which, will be plain to me
when I am face to face with the powers of dimin-
ishment and death: grant that having desired I may
believe, and believe ardently, believe above all
things, in your active presence.
Thanks to you, this faith and this expectancy are
already full of effective power. But how am I to
show you, and prove to myself, through some visi-
ble endeavor, that I am not of those who, with their
lips only, cry to you "Lord, Lord"? I shall cooperate
with that divine power through which you act upon
me and anticipate my initiatives; and I shall do so
in two ways.
First, to that profound inspiration whereby you
impel me to seek the fullness of being I shall re-
spond by striving never to stifle or distort or
squander my powers of loving and making. And
then, to your all-embracing providence which at
each moment shows me, through the events of the
day, the next step I must take, the next rung I must
climb, I shall respond by striving never to miss an
opportunity of rising up towards the realm of spirit.
39
"O ye of little faith," why fear or hold aloof from
the onward march of the world? Why foolishly
multiply your prophecies of woe and your prohibi-
tions: "Don't venture there; don't attempt that; ev-
erything is already known that can be known; the
earth is grown old and stale and empty; there is
nothing more for us to find. . . *
On the contrary, we must try everything for
PensSes 115
Christ; w£ must hope everything for Christ. Nihil
inteiifatum:* thai is the true Christian attitude.
Diviiiization means not destruction but supercrea-
tion. We can never know all that the Incarnation
still asks of the world's potentialities. We can never
hope for too much from the growing unity of man-
kind.
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