Pilgrim of the Future

Like James Joyce or Sigmund Freud, the late Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit priest and paleontologist, has become an inescapable intellectual presence of the age. Until, and even after, his death in 1955, the Vatican forbade the publication of his nonscientific works, largely because he accepted evolution as the key to human history. In the eyes of Rome, Teilhard remains a near heretic. Last month the Holy Office issued a solemn warning for religious superiors "to guard souls, especially of the young, against the dangers contained in the works of Father Teilhard de Chardin and his followers."

Teilhard hoped to get his ideas published but, as a good Jesuit, obeyed when Rome said no. Nevertheless, manuscript copies of his works filtered into scholarly French circles. To the dismay of the Vatican, an international committee of intellectuals--including Biologist Sir Julian Huxley and Historian Arnold Toynbee --has posthumously sponsored publication of his major works. Teilhard, who was known in his lifetime as one of the discoverers of the Peking Man, thought of himself as "a pilgrim of the future," and his reputation continues to grow: a museum in Paris bears his name, more than 500 monographs and 30 books have been written about him since his death, and last month 40 top European scholars gathered in Venice for a seminar to discuss his ideas.

Just published in the U.S. is the latest product of the Teilhard industry. Circumspectly edited by his cousin, Claude Aragonnes. Father Teilhard's Letters from a Traveller (Harper; $4) contains a smattering of the vast correspondence he carried on with friends and relatives--often from archaeological campsites in such spots as the Gobi desert. Unlike his metaphysical masterwork The Phenomenon of Man (TIME, Dec. 14. 1959) or his mystical treatise on The Divine Milieu (TIME, Feb. ID. 1961), Teilhard's letters are largely free of neologisms, contain wise and witty comments on a world he clearly loved, and clearly saw sub specie aeternitatis. A sampling of Teilhardisms:

ON GOD: Today human activity as a whole is faced by the problem of God; it is a problem that can be approached only in the total effort of human research and experience. It is not only that God gives lasting value to the human effort, but also that his revelation is a response to the sum total of that effort.

ON BUSINESS: 'How,' you ask. 'can the success of a commercial enterprise bring with it moral progress?' And I answer. 'In this way. that since everything holds together in a world which is on the way to unification, the spiritual success of the universe is bound up with the correct functioning of every zone of that universe and particularly with the release of every possible energy in it. Because your undertaking is going well, a little more health is being spread in the human mass, and in consequence a little more liberty to act, to think and to love.'

ON THE SOVIET UNION (written in 1939): In the end, it is Russia that is be coming public enemy No.1. The danger in that quarter would appear to be ... the formation of a national group, hostile, watertight, completely ignorant of what lies outside itself, and so incapable of being included in the far-reaching combination of a mankind we need.

ON CHRISTMAS IN MANHATTAN: Fir trees covered in lights are ranged all along Park Avenue; the big stores have flesh and blood Santa Clauses at their en trances; and the counters are besieged by customers buying presents for one anoth er. You can't distinguish where shrewd commercial advertising ends and where emotional spirituality begins.

ON THE FUTURE: It seems obvious to me that the moment has come when man kind is going to be divided (or will have to make the choice) between faith and nonfaith in the earth's collective spiritual progress. I feel resolutely determined to devote myself by all possible means to the defense of the idea of the reality of a progress against every secular or religious pessimism.

ON THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE: I feel how much the exploration of the earth in itself fails to bring any light or point out any solution to the most fundamental questions. And I know, too, that the wider the problem seems to grow be fore my eyes, the more clearly I see that its solution can only be sought in a 'faith' beyond all experience.

ON OPTIMISM : I can see more distinct ly how much my interior life is dominated by these twin peaks: an unbounded faith in Our Lord, as animator of the world; and a clear-eyed faith in the world (particularly the world of man) as animated by God. I feel that my mind is made up to declare myself a 'believer' in the future of the world in spite of appearances, in spite of a false orthodoxy that confuses progress and materialism, change and liberalism, the perfecting of man and naturalism. My sole ambition is to leave behind me the mark of a logical life, directed wholly towards the grand hopes of the world.

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