Man in Search of Himself

From Society to Humanity

There can be no question of undertaking a critical examination of the working of society, its influence upon the individual, its qualities, and its defects. In the first place, several complete books would not suffice to cover such a vast subject, even if confined to the essential points. Secondly, it is not certain that there is really any sense in making value judgments on problems arising from man's reflections upon the results of human action. Finally — and above all — because our aim here is still to keep on the most general plane: that is, to limit our study to the phenomena of society as such, seeking first and foremost to follow its evolution in space and time and to study its origins, its archetypal roots, its development, and its future prospects.

Society is an organisation composed of individuals, and so essentially a collection of men, a whole that is defined by a certain structure — if we may once again adopt the language of mathematics. One of the aims of such a whole is obvious enough: it is a simple illustration of the proverb, "There is safety in numbers". Society enables individual man to make a better adaptation to his external environment.

This is true enough; but it is also true of the animals, which also know how to form societies in the sense just referred to. In what follows I should like to try to show that human society is not only this, but that it corresponds to a deeper aim, an aim that has a part to play on the scale of the whole of cosmic evolution. For human society represents the first groping attempts of a new being to find itself, the first tentative efforts of a new complex structure built up by assembling in a predetermined form a large number of human beings in close communication with one another. This new being generally goes by the name of 'humanity'; and we shall see that this is not merely a structure in which the different properties of individual men are simply added together. Humanity, in the broad sense we shall give the word, is a structure in which we can expect new properties, not comparable with those of man as an individual. In the same way — and this comparison is perhaps much more than a simple analogy when applied to the whole of cosmic evolution — man is a society of living cells whose characteristics are not compatible with those of a single living cell.

The Advance to Reflection

But let us first place ourselves on the animal level in order to see what the universe 'is' at this stage. It 'is' what the animal has succeeded in bringing into consciousness. To revert to the great distinction so much beloved by Teilhard de Chardin, the great difference between the animal and man is that the former knows, whereas the latter knows that he knows; and between these two stages lies the great step of reflection which is so important in evolution and to which we shall return.

So the animal is endowed with a certain consciousness, whereby it 'knows'. This consciousness is essentially instinctive, that is to say, it is directly inspired by a spontaneous symbolisation of the animal's unconscious archetypes. The animal knows how to make a society, but the fact that it 'does not know what it is doing' prevents it from entrusting to this society the conscious inheritance belonging to each individual. It is therefore never possible for the conscious structures of the animal to grow in mutual complexity, nor can they increase by simple addition in time.

There is, no doubt, some interaction between the animal's individual consciousness and it unconscious; for the latter is bound up, as in man and in all life, with a collective unconscious, and is therefore shared by successive generations. Because consciousness can act in this way on the unconscious, there may be in some sort — but only by way of the collective unconscious — a certain growth and augmentation of the conscious vision of animals in the course of time. But this increase of animal consciousness is necessarily relatively slow in operation, seeing that it takes place only via the animal collective unconscious. Now, since the universe 'is' at the animal stage only what the animal has succeeded in bringing into consciousness, it is easy to see why Being has not found a very effective way of expressing itself through the medium of animal life.

To put it more precisely, the animal's method of expression is ineffective compared with what would appear when man had made the great advance to reflection and became the being who 'knows that he knows'.

But here, too, we must be careful to see where this abrupt extension of the universe originated: it was not so much man, but rather society, that made this better expression of Being possible.

It is, to be sure, perfectly conceivable that man — as defined by this capacity for reflection — might have originated in the midst of, say, a group of monkeys. Or we could at any rate try to imagine this possibility and then see what consequences this might have had for the expression of the universe. This man, being a man and not simply an animal, could no doubt in the course of his existence have built up for himself a conscious structure far beyond that of the troop of monkeys he had grown up with. His outlook on the world would therefore have been much wider than that of the animal; he would have been able to 'give birth' to a universe far larger than that of the first primates by means of the conscious language he had at his disposal. Nevertheless, the universe would not have gone beyond the isolated version of this one man. He would certainly have been unable to take advantage of — that is, to preserve — this new field of vision opened up by human reflection. When this man died, the universe which his Word had expressed in a larger way, would once more shrink to its previous animal dimensions.

But all of a sudden, with the birth of human society, the universe was to 'get under way' and extend at a speed that had never before been reached. With the appearance of the smallest human society imaginable — one man and one woman capable of procreating other human beings — the universe entered a new phase that cannot be compared with all that had 'existed' (that is, been conscious), up till then.

Adam and Eve

The appearance of human society meant the sharing of all the species' conscious knowledge. From this time onwards, there existed a memory-store of information, not only on the unconscious level (which was already the case through the animal collective unconscious), but on the conscious level. All that a previous generation had succeeded in 'bringing to birth' in the universe by becoming conscious of it, the next generation would now have direct knowledge of — thanks to the education of children by parents and, more generally, by society. It can readily be appreciated that in this way a truly 'new' universe had come into being, a universe which could, on the score of consciousness, also be called 'expanding' (as the purely material Universe is now known to have been from the beginning).

On this subject it is probably as well to stress this particular point in reply to those who are pleased — for some reason best known to themselves — to underestimate the phenomenon of man. It is too often asserted today, in face of the vastness of the Universe revealed by science, that man counts for little over against the cosmos, and that he could even disappear without this being really important.

We have no intention here of putting forward anthropocentric views; on the contrary, we must be continually on the watch against placing man in a 'privileged' position. But we must not go to the opposite extreme and systematically minimise the phenomenon of man. Our purely experimental knowledge of our planet Earth gives us no right to consider the phenomenon of man as anything other than the primordial phenomenon on Earth. Moreover, our progress in astronomy, physics, and biology does not allow us today to accept as the most probable hypothesis the existence of man on this Earth alone, simply 'by accident'. Beyond the inter-stellar spaces, in the procession of planets that accompany the millions of stars in the sky, there must exist other human beings, analogous to, if not identical with ourselves. We can hardly doubt this fact, and we shall become more convinced of its truth in the next chapter. So if man as an individual appears to be small over against the Universe, man as representing humanity is in no sense small in comparison with it. A single star is also small in comparison with the Universe, and could be destroyed without apparently making much difference (which sometimes happens when a super-nova explodes); but the phenomenon of stars in general is not by any means insignificant. If all the stars were to disappear, this would mean a complete alteration in the face of the Universe.

It is thus utterly unjustifiable to assert that man as the representative of humanity has not a part of the very first importance to play on the scale of the Universe as a whole. But, as in the example of the stars, this rτle is not important by reason of the material place occupied by humanity in space and time, but by virtue of man's conscious place, as the representative of consciousness. Let us repeat that the universe 'is' that which has become conscious of Being, and it 'is' therefore chiefly what humanity has succeeded in 'giving birth to' by bringing it into consciousness — understanding 'humanity' in the most general sense as including all the conscious structures of the universe. Removing this humanity from the Universe would mean not simply the material disappearance of all the conscious beings concerned; it would mean the sudden shrinkage of the universe itself to the narrow proportions conferred on it by the consciousness of the animals. Whether we like it or not, it must be admitted that this would be a change of the greatest significance!

Language

Let us try to follow out over the whole course of time, from the formation of the first human group onwards, the way in which the language of society was to be built up.

Man as an individual was in the first place sensitive to the archetypes of life, for it was the symbolisation of these archetypes that enabled him to make the best possible adaptation to his external environment, and in particular to defend himself against attack from this environment so as to secure his survival.

Hence the first language of society will be thoroughly marked with these symbols of life. Society is to become from generation to generation a precious receptacle for the recipes which enable man to work out a better adaptation to the world. First of all, society will accumulate a stock of individual knowledge contributed by each individual man through his contacts with the environment in which he lives. Thus from its earliest beginnings society is destined to make common cause with science, which aims precisely at achieving as exact a description of Nature as possible. And it is abundantly clear that science has been able to build itself up only thanks to society — through the pooling of individual knowledge in space and in time.

Society was to prove an immense advantage to man. It was to be a shield which enabled him to put up a better defence against attacks from outside. The struggle against wild animals, the organisation of hunting to assure supplies of food, the organisation of the first medical steps against disease, the division of labour for the battle against weather conditions — all these were to become possible thanks, in the main, to society.

Society as a 'Being'

For society as a 'being' was also to encounter most of the difficulties confronting individuals. First of all, there were to appear from time to time within its spatial framework human elements who, for some reason or another, spoke a language incompatible with the collective language built up by society. Then society would be 'sick', like a human body invaded by a harmful virus. In order to avoid the dangers of illness, society soon had to accompany its language with certain rules to be followed, on pain of sanctions, by all members of society. In this way a certain moral code and a degree of social justice came into being.

War

It will be necessary to dwell on a particular aspect of this phenomenon of war, not in order to judge it from any moral point of view, but to look down on it as it were from a great height, trying to see whether or not it plays any part on the scale of evolution as a whole. This is a question worth considering; for if war is a purely gratuitous phenomenon, simply an abscess on the evolutionary body, expressing nothing but the satisfaction of one people's ambition at the expense of another, its extensiveness over the whole course of human history would make us cast very serious doubts on the value of the phenomenon of man in cosmic evolution.

As a matter of fact, that is what war in the main consists of. It is an unnatural extension of the language that comes from the archetypes of life. In order to achieve a better life, man desires to be greater; and for the same reason, society desires to be greater. The means of becoming greater may consist of an increase in knowledge, that is, in the advance of science; but it may also consist of an increase in territory and in wealth, or simply in the proceeds of theft and an increase in power achieved by war.

But surely war is also an unnatural method by which society blindly seeks the way mapped out by evolution; surely it is evidence of a presentiment in society that humanity is meant in the long run to be one united body; it shows that society is in effect attempting to discover the broadest and most perfect collective language, fitted to become the language of humanity in the future; and that a particular society wants to measure its own language against that of a neighbouring society in order to see how far its own is superior.

I am merely putting the question. The reader must not jump to the conclusion that the phenomenon of war can in any way be justified, even on the plane of evolution as a whole, as a necessary process of mixing to produce the race of the future. For quite apart from the horrible character of war (judged from a moral point of view, which is strictly outside our present purpose here), there are quite obviously other means open to society for finding the true way forward for the human race. As a matter of fact, when the phenomenon of war is considered solely on the evolutionary plane, it is seen to be nothing more than two languages in collision, two conscious collective structures vying with one another to see which can gain the upper hand. The way to achieve progress while avoiding warfare will then lie not so much in proving that one of these languages is better than the other, but in a common endeavour to see if a new language may not exist, broader than those two previous ones, which could include them both without setting them in contradiction. This is the method by which true progress towards a language of humanity on an acceptable basis can be achieved; and we may well recall that this is none other than the method of generalisation, so largely employed in science, which we discussed in chapter 3. Warfare would be analogous to an attempt to prove, for instance, in the realm of science, that matter is undulatory and not corpuscular (or vice versa); generalisation, on the other hand, represents the unitary way which produces agreement by arriving at a broader and deeper language that embraces both the wave and the particle conceptions. Any society should in the same way aim at deepening its language by searching for postulates which will embrace the languages of several societies without contradicting any of them; and this is the path indicated by evolution towards the attainment of a being, using a planetary language, who will represent the humanity of tomorrow upon this Earth.

Towards a Language of Love

Whilst the archetypes of life gave birth essentially to knowledge of the external environment and so also to science, the universal archetypes, linking humanity with the deeper levels of the Universe, gave birth to what we might group together under the single word 'love' — which includes religion.

In the next chapter we shall see in greater detail how, throughout the course of history, man thus finds himself united (and with growing intensity) to the world as a whole by means of knowledge and of love. Knowledge represents a kind of union through the convergence of the external environment on man — a convergence of the All upon the One. Love, on the other hand, is the projection of man towards his external environment — a projection of the One towards the All.

Knowledge is science, and also the everyday Known, which governs the greater part of our ordinary activities. Love, in the widest sense, is in the first place a projection of oneself towards the outside world, by the process of creation: any invention, any work that bears the stamp of human originality, is therefore in a certain sense an expression of love. In a simpler way, as ordinarily understood, love is the projection of man to man or, on a general way, to all that is alive; it is charity, generosity, sympathy, affection — all that we sum up in the word 'love'. It is also a projection of the self towards the total Universe to which we belong; and so it appears in man as a need for 'adoration'. It is this last form, revolving round man's communion with ultimate Being, which gives birth to the phenomenon of religion.

What man symbolises in his own language produces its repercussions in the language of society. As soon as the earliest human groups are formed, the religious sentiment becomes associated with the life of society. This is a problem we looked at in chapter 5.

It will be enough to repeat at this point that the earliest religious language had some difficulty in breaking away from the language coming from the archetypes of life, for man's first thought is always how best to survive, before he comes to consider questions of metaphysics. Or, to put the matter more precisely, we are in the presence of one of those symbolic imbalances we discussed in connection with psychoanalysis. The language of life was to prove so dominant in the structuring of man's consciousness (and therefore of the rules of society) that the language of religion was destined to develop as another variant of the language already in use in man's struggle against his external environment. In the early days, religion was largely man's appeal to the Universe as a whole to assure his triumph over the harmful elements, over illness, over the animal world; and also to enable man to triumph over man, one society over another. And so religion soon began to carry the banners of warfare; for it must not be forgotten that the whole history of humanity, from the most primitive to the most recent peoples, shows religion to be not only the strongest supporter of the militant spirit ("God is on our side") but even to be a justifier of war itself (for example, in the wars of religion). Only during the last few centuries have economic justifications often taken the place of religious ones in this field (though this by no means exhausts the theme, for some of our modern wars cannot be entirely dissociated from a certain religious ideology — at least when we look beneath the surface}.

Yet in spite of this symbolic imbalance which gives the fundamental concept of religion a certain warlike aspect, the language of love nevertheless began to make it appearance in human consciousness under the influence of the universal archetypes. It is important to stress the significance of this phenomenon, not only because love seems to us, for vaguely sentimental reasons, to be something desirable among human qualities, but rather because man — and with him, society — is bound to be unstable unless it succeeds in associating love, which allows him to find support in the very heart of the Universe, with knowledge, which links him to the external world. Man's roots go down into religion, and thanks to science he rises to ever greater heights; but no tree has ever been secure without roots; and the taller the tree, the deeper the roots must be. The unrest that is typical of many modern societies which have been exalted by scientific discoveries and technical development is largely due to the dwindling (and sometimes even the disappearance) of the religious sense. Man sees things from a lofty standpoint and his vision ranges far afield; but he feels the ground shifting beneath his feet. It would seem to be high time for him to pause, reflect, and put down deeper roots to take new hold on the universe revealed by religion; for surely the great evil of our times is that we have too much knowledge and too little love.

The Rτle of Art

Art pervades the consciousness of mankind and so, just like science and religion, plays a part in the life of society as soon as the earliest human groups have come into being.

Again, like science and religion, art begins by finding its inspiration in the material that comes from archetypes of life — as in drawings of animals to ensure successful hunting, dances to get the better of the lawless elements or enemies on the outskirts of the clan, and sculptures glorifying fertility.

Chapter 7 dwelt at length on the essential part played by the artistic sentiment in the framework of social life; and it is still the strongest bond of union between men. The language of art is a direct dialogue between the artist and his fellow-man on the deep level of the unconscious, where purely conscious symbolism plays little part. This is an important point, since consciousness is often saturated with symbols that divide instead of uniting, inviting men to react towards one another in the same aggressive way that they do to their environment. The language of art, on the other hand, is peaceful and unitive. Turning towards science, the language of art provides us with aesthetics, which is a feeling for the beautiful, based upon a certain logic. Turning towards religion, it provides a moral sense, a feeling for what is good, based on a certain faith. As the language of art pure and simple, it is union; when steeped in science or religion, it is union in search of itself.

As they develop, all human societies are searching, come what may, for a new level of life which will, in comparison with man, be what man is compared with a single living cell. This new being will be endowed with new properties not found in single individuals or in society. This being, whose name is written across the whole evolutionary course of the entire Universe, in none other than humanity: humanity on this Earth, as our first concern, and then humanity extended to embrace, in successive stages, man throughout the whole Universe.

Humanity also requires above all a certain kind of union between men: not simply a union brought about by economic or social agreements; not a union in which societies merely tolerate one another; but union on the deep level that lies beneath the surface of the individual consciousness, a union of love rather than logic.

In this advance of society towards humanity, art would appear to be of considerable importance. It is art that enables all men to hold converse with one another; and it is not such an easy thing — long before there is any thought of unity — simply to succeed in talking to one another or, more precisely, to talk to one another in a common language. As we have stressed many times, no understanding is possible in a dialogue where the same words really conceal two different conscious logical structures, i.e. two different languages. Let us with all speed restore to art the importance given to it by primitive peoples and by antiquity; for its evolutionary rτle is surely much greater than is suggested by a civilisation which prides itself above all things on being 'scientific'.

Social 'Disease'

Society possesses its own language — the one generally accepted by the majority of the individuals who compose it. But what happens when an individual claims to speak a language different from that of the society to which he belongs?

Let us take a concrete example. A society has shaped itself a language from which the concept of war is not completely excluded. In certain cases, when society gives the order, each man has to take his weapon and be prepared to kill his neighbour — or, more precisely — whatever neighbour his own society directs him to kill. But suppose a conscientious objector comes along. The postulates of his language differ on this fundamental point from those of his society. He is completely incapable of attempting to kill his neighbour, however good the cause may be, because of his language — that is, the conscious structure he has built up for himself.

The problem now is what society ought to do. Keep in mind that this society is a real 'being', with its own language; and in this language, the conscientious objector is certainly wrong. But society is a 'being' which acts automatically, in accordance with the economic and social rules resulting from its language. If an individual member of this society acts in a manner that violates its language, society will automatically apply sanctions against him. So the conscientious objector will be condemned, and all will be well. By acting in this way against the aggressor, society recovers its health.

But is all well? Society must no doubt have its rules and apply them; for it is to them in the last resort that each of us owes his general protection. Moreover, these rules are only the result of what successive generations have freely and unitedly contributed, for they have built up the language of society.

In this very delicate case of the conscientious objector, or in the case of euthanasia, or capital punishment, or in any of those cases where our modern society can come down on one side only after the greatest hesitation, does not the application of the rules of society sometimes have a retarding effect on the natural evolution of the language of society? And does it not deprive certain individual members of this society of their liberty in a manner which they may find objectionable?

I do not here pretend to attempt any answer to these big questions. I simply want to call attention to the existence of the problem. Let us not forget that it was society which condemned Galileo because he asserted that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Society is a 'being', but we must be well aware that, like any other 'being', it can sometimes be wrong about evolution.

Of course, there can be no suggestion that we should continually be calling in question the rules of society; this would only produce absolute anarchy. But our contemporary society needs to see to it that these rules should never be static, but essentially evolving. The advance towards a more perfect humanity will not progress by increasingly curtailing the liberty of the individual — a tendency apt to creep in to a society that does not show itself immediately sensitive in its rules to any changes of outlook on the world that come about in the individual man. Nowadays, these changes in men's outlook take place with great rapidity; and society, because of its size, always suffers from a certain inertia, so there is always some time-lag in making appropriate accommodation in the society's rules. To prevent this time-lag from becoming too great, we should not so much have to modify the rules of society (which would then need further change in a very short time) but rather to make these rules capable of spontaneous and continual modification by a kind of built-in 'radar' system, which would do exactly the opposite of what was formerly done — not seek to justify the present rules with reference to the past, but rather with an eye to the future. A society with an essentially adaptable language, continually asking itself questions about its own development, would appear to be the one most likely to maintain the liberties of each individual at a time when society is expanding and growing in complexity at an ever-increasing speed.

"Supra-social" Disease

This problem is not as simple as it appears at first sight. There is a tendency to think at the outset that when such a conflict arises between two societies, one is generally in the right and the other in the wrong. In reality — and this is also true of individuals — the source of the difficulties in most cases lies in the fact that the societies in question are using different languages. Each society, using its own language, can make out a good case for its being in the right. Here is another example of Kurt Gφdel's theorem, which was discussed in chapter 3. We saw that two languages built up on different, but not necessarily contradictory, postulates, always end by colliding over a given phenomenon where one of them describes as white what the other calls black; and then, unless care is taken, there will be a battle between these two languages.

An attempt can also be made to show that when a conflict takes place between two societies, it arises from economic or social ambitions on the part of one of them. To satisfy these ambitions, it may be 'useful' to appropriate a neighbour's territory and reduce its inhabitants to a condition of semi-slavery. It may also be argued that war is something produced by the actions of men as individuals and, properly speaking, not so much by societies: the people often play a relatively small part in making the decision leading to the outbreak of armed conflict.

All this is no doubt true to a large extent; but it is not entirely true. Conflict between societies must also be seen as a step taken by evolution to discover the appropriate language for one single society occupying the whole of our planet, a step towards bringing all peoples into one great humanity upon Earth.

To get a clear grasp of this point, it will be enough to note that numerous countries can exist side by side over a long period without any warlike conflict arising provided that the languages of the neighbouring countries — that is, the collective conscious structure of the societies they constitute — are more or less analogous. This is true, for example, of France and Belgium, or of the United States and Canada. If the only cause of war were the simple need to satisfy human ambitions, it would probably be very rare for two neighbouring countries to live at peace with each other over any considerable period. There must, then, be another reason for peace, and this would seem to be a similarity in language. The evolutionary archetypes do not in that case suggest to man (and, through man, to society) that one country should attempt to challenge the language of its neighbour, since their respective languages are based upon almost identical postulates.

On the other hand, the languages only have to be different to produce an evolutionary urge towards combat, to decide which of them is the more suited to a 'large-scale' society.

These remarks are not meant as a justification for war; I am simply stating what I consider to be objective facts about war as a phenomenon, looking at the matter from as lofty a standpoint as possible and trying to see the part played by war in the evolutionary scheme as a whole.

When wondering at the persistence of war today even among peoples who claim to be civilised, one suspects that there may well be a biological aspect of war. The small boy, from the earliest age, loves to fight and brandish weapons; and this combative instinct persists in the adult, for it is a biological part of him. This may be the reason why this scourge cannot be eliminated from civilisation once and for all.

However, I think it should be added that the biological urge which incites man to fight has its roots in an unconscious archetype which ultimately is a line of force drawing society towards a world-wide humanity speaking a single language — a humanity which, let us repeat, will be to man what man is to the single living cell, a humanity whose coming existence is surely written in the pages of the total evolution of the Universe.

Moreover, this archetype does not necessarily lead to war. If war occurs, it is because struggle as a means of deciding between languages is directly suggested to man by the archetypes of life which are the basis for his instinct for self-preservation. An alternative and peaceful solution in overcoming the difficulty of deciding between the two languages belonging to the two societies would, as suggested earlier, be to join in seeking for a new language, wider and deeper than the previous ones, calculated to set the two languages of the conflicting societies side by side as complementary in value instead of contradictory. This is the process of generalisation; this is the real peaceful advance towards humanity.

We should now have reached a turning-point in the methods of settling conflicts between societies arising from differences of language. The means of destruction made available by a technical society are nowadays so formidable and so destructive on a large scale that the same archetypes of life, and the same instinct for self-preservation which formerly suggested to men that they should decide the issue by warfare, now urge them to find a peaceful solution by seeking together for a language which will remove the source of conflict. No society, however wealthy, extensive, or powerful it may be, can claim to be proof against reprisals which could reduce it to ashes in the space of a few minutes. The instinct for self-preservation seems at last to be suggesting to man that he should settle his linguistic incompatibilities by peaceful means, whereas previously this selfsame instinct had suggested war as the means of solving the problem.

This is a very important point. All the previous pages have shown us to what an extent man is the plaything of this instinct of self-preservation, which is the fundamental symbol of the archetypes of life.

But this is not enough. Evolution demands that earthly societies should advance towards one single humanity; it therefore demands that efforts should be made to discover a wider and deeper language which can embrace the various languages already existing on Earth. The evolution of the Universe is an all-embracing movement which carries along in its immense power all our little human societies. This evolution is bound to take place; and if peaceful methods do not allow progress towards a single humanity to continue, there is no doubt that large-scale war will reappear on our planet, with utterly devastating results. This is something of which every man and every society on Earth must be fully aware.

Inevitability

We shall note two kinds of characteristics. On the scale of the elementary being — that is, the individual man — we shall see that the harmonious union of men with one another will be brought about by education; and then on a larger scale, we shall see humanity being structured and knitted together around three pivotal forces — science, art, and religion.

Education

If we concentrate our attention more particularly upon each single man [or woman! — Ed.], the constituent of this new humanity, we can hardly avoid seeing that this man will, like every living cell, have to possess in his own person more or less the same information as each of the other men in this humanity possesses. This is a well-known characteristic of each cell in every living body. Each cell possesses, through the chromosomes in its nucleus, a kind of code containing the details (we could almost say the plans) according to which the entire individual is built. There is no doubt that this fact plays an important part in the individual behaviour of each cell as it contributes its share to the harmony of the whole.

In the same way, the need for great harmony in the behaviour of the man who will constitute the humanity of the future would seem to require each man to possess a conscious structure capable of understanding the total conscious structure of the human race. In other words, humanity will be essentially defined in terms of a language, a language which all our present societies are searching for; and this language will have to be understood by each man on our planet.

This is why the education of all men would seem to be the first requirement for advance towards this new humanity. For if on the scale of societies there arises the problem of the collective discovery of a common language, on the level of a single society there is still the problem of ensuring that each individual speaks the language of his society as a whole. Now this result can be achieved only by the spread of education to all the members of the society.

We are using the word 'education' in the widest possible sense. It is not merely a question of the teaching ordinarily given to children between about the ages of five and twenty, though something like this will have to be extended to all men.

But why cut education short at any arbitrary age? It is generally admitted today that our knowledge is growing so rapidly that such teaching, though valid at the time it was given, will be out of date in a few years' time. What man needs today, and what the individual member of the future will certainly demand, is life-long education. This kind of education is already possible by means of the existing techniques for disseminating information, through books, radio, and television. [And, now, the Internet. — Ed.] There can be no doubt that in the years to come these means should be used to provide the life-long education so necessary for present-day man, who has considerable difficulty in finding his bearings in the universe in which he lives because things are changing at such speed. A life-long education would mean a constant mental enrichment, and would restore to man the feeling of stability which he so sorely needs.

Moreover, a scheme of life-long education would greatly modify the principles of education for the young as practised at present. The mass of knowledge to be acquired today in order to be master of everything (even on the most general level) is so great as to be beyond the powers of any one individual, and this situation will naturally go on getting worse. The important thing in the future will be not so much 'learning' (with its reliance upon memory) as knowledge. No longer will people learn the names of all the bones in the hand, for example; it will be enough to have seen (and so 'known') the skeleton of a hand, appreciated the fact that it contains numerous bones, and realised that the exact number can be ascertained by referring to such-and-such a text-book. The frequent recourse to memory required by the teaching methods of today could likewise be profitably replaced by teaching certain methods of thought indispensable to modern man.

We cannot dwell at length here on this enthralling subject of education; but it must be emphasised that education — of a reformed kind and spread over the whole life-span — will constitute the most important step taken by humanity towards the possibility of a common language and a common conscious structure, which will represent the first milestone on the road to the humanity of the future.

But let there be no mistake: to provide each man with a common language so that all can communicate easily and harmoniously with one another does not imply that each person's knowledge will be the same. The humanity of tomorrow will leave plenty of room for specialists, who will be absolutely indispensable for the smooth running of society, especially when this society covers the whole planet. But along with the specialist's analytical thinking, we shall have to develop a synthetic outlook, an ability to see the central axes around which knowledge revolves and to understand the mechanism of the human advance. The life-long education of which we have just been speaking will be principally concerned with acquiring such a synthetic outlook on our universe. It will be important for each individual to be profoundly aware of the great axes around which everything revolves, but not necessarily to know everything in detail. This will be left to the specialists, each in his own particular sphere. Seen in this light, a life-long education will not involve a levelling-down of culture (so as to give everyone the same culture), but will make it possible for each person to use and develop his own specific human qualities in the freest possible setting.

Moreover, as we shall see in the next chapter, this life-long education will make man a kind of 'reception-centre' where knowledge can continually come in, be reflected upon, and grow in substance, so that each day he feels himself more and more at one with the cosmos as a whole. This life-long education is not only an indispensable stage in the realisation of a universal humanity; it is also part of the deeper education of man and a part of his rτle in evolution. This is a point to which we shall presently return.

The New Humanity

We can once again take an analogy from the human body — and we can reflect that, in view of the economy of the means used by Nature in evolution, it is probably much more than a mere analogy.

What, then, is the general framework of human action? What are the broad 'human' characteristics which will crop up again and again in the new humanity?

Well, man needs a consciousness, so that he may be capable of external action; and this consciousness is principally situated in the cerebro-spinal nervous system, that is, in the cortex and the neo-encephalon.

Man likewise possesses a personal unconscious which links him to the total Universe, both in space and time, through every particle of his body. This human unconscious psyche would seem to be based upon the autonomic nervous system, in particular upon the hypothalamus and the archencephalon.

Finally, the conscious and the unconscious in man must be able to communicate with one another. This takes place through the elaboration of conscious symbols, starting from the unconscious archetypes. Man sets out in symbolic form the imagery obtained in the first place from his conscious knowledge of his exterior environment, and does this in such a way as to permeate this imagery with the material provided by his unconscious mind.

Here then are three fundamental lines along which man develops. His roots go down into his unconscious; he stretches up towards the heights of his exterior world through his conscious mind; and his reach is all the higher and surer insofar as he succeeds in more effectively symbolising his unconscious archetypes in terms of his consciousness. When the human being does his best to develop his life harmoniously around these three axes, achieving a balance without exaggerating any one of them in relation to the others, he fulfils his true human calling and becomes what Nature meant him to be.

If we extend the picture to the sum-total of humanity on Earth, these same three axes will, as it were, constitute the framework around which the humanity of the future will seek to achieve a harmonious development.

On the scale of society, the unconscious rests upon religion. For humanity to be able to take firm root, the religious sentiment must be sufficiently developed in men as a whole. After all, and before all else, religion is love; and there can be no humanity without love — love of the Universe, love of living beings, love for things, love for everything that is other than oneself. The advance towards a more perfect humanity will consist not so much in humanity's agreeing upon one single religion (for, as we have seen, humanity will need to give each of its members a greater freedom than any man has so far known in society) as in its becoming aware, in an atmosphere of mutual religious tolerance, of the deep-down oneness of Being which underlies the religious sense of each and all.

The consciousness of humanity is a collective structure which opens up vast horizons to the human race in its external environment; and the basis of this structure is scientific knowledge. With the rapid development of astronautics, it is already becoming obvious that our planet as a whole is by its actions having an effect on the world outside itself. No one can fail to see that this is already action by the whole of humanity. The success of the interstellar journeys soon to be undertaken will rejoice the hearts of all men, and this feeling will be much more than the simple national pride of those who achieve the greatest successes in this realm (though this will, of course, exist). A planetary technique in the service of a science that is already on a planetary scale will be the second axis round which the humanity will form.

Our third axis, which will ensure harmonious communication between science and religion, will be art. We must insist on the fact that science can become a monster if not held firmly in check by religion. Humanity cannot and must not be merely a consciousness in freedom: in order not to stray, this consciousness must take its orders from sources right at the heart of evolution — and religion is the sole channel through which these sources can communicate with men.

Art, it seems, will be the best means of liaison between science and religion. In the humanity of the future, it will play an important part in men's lives, and it will be a source of great joie de vivre. It will remind man at every turn of the harmonious collective part that the human race is called to play in evolution. It will, as it were, bring new blood into the race by providing a language which will enable all men to communicate with one another on the level of the senses; and it will infuse love into knowledge — a love which, as we need hardly remind ourselves, is so particularly necessary for a science that is in a continual state of expansion, because a science without love can too easily prompt men to self-destruction if they are not careful. Yet, in partnership with love, science can give man the power to carry out his tremendous mission.

In order to consider this task of man in the Universe, we shall attempt in our final chapter to widen our field of vision so as to take in, if we can, the whole of cosmic evolution.