The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (review)

BOOK REVIEWS ~95 our other separated brethren in Christ should be denied the right to that dialogue. Dominican House of Studitl8, Washington, D. C. BoNAVENTURE M. ScHEPERS, 0. P. The Phenomenon of Man. By PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959. Pp. 311, with index. $5.00. This is an essay which appears under peculiarly diverse auspiceswritten by a Catholic priest with a laudatory introduction by an admitted atheist, printed by friends of the author after having been refused printing by the Society of which he was a member, suspected of heresy by reviewers in some continental journals and hailed as brilliant and orthodox in American publications. At the least, the book ought to be intriguing. Some of the diversity of opinion regarding the merits of this book can perhaps be explained if account is taken of the unusual point of view from which it was written. It is a question of literary genre. If the book is judged by what it ought to say, or by what it tends to imply, it is patently vulnerable from the points of view of theology and philosophy and even of science. And perhaps precisely because of this, the restricted point of view adopted by the author cannot be justified; perhaps he could not avoid entanglements with other levels of knowledge however much he so desired. Perhaps he saw this, and persisted anyway, for purposes which were ultimately apologetic, or apostolic. Or perhaps he believed that his approach was itself basically valid and productive of an authentic truththese are interesting questions, and if they could be settled, the judgments passed on the book would not display such confusing diversity. But first, it would be better to describe Fr. de Chardin's methodology, and to give some account of the gist of his doctrine, before weighing them on scales whose measurements he was not, within the limits of his immediate purpose, acknowledging, but to which he must eventually submit. Fr. de Chardin has written a vivid account of the origin and development of the cosmos as an evident manifestation of universal evolution. He is determinedly non-theological; his descriptions never rest. on any revealed truths. He claims, moreover, that he is non-philosophical. He is determined to rely wholly on the phenomenal evidence, on the concrete manifestations of the origins and developments of physical things as these are revealed especially in the sciences of paleontology and archaeology. In this light, he claims to see a movement of cosmogenesis, an infinitely slow coming-tobe of more and more complex states of matter, up to and beyond the organization of matter into manifestly living states, and up beyond thi8 296 BOOK REVIEWS to the revealing of consciousness, and beyond this, into the emerging of a super-consciousness which opens itself to God, and so is consummated. What can be said of this? In the first place, it does not seem to be a heretical thesis, not even materially. In its development there are admittedly places where a sense of the Faith and theology cries loudly for a hearing, and Fr. de Chardin resolutely refuses it. But this is not necessarily heresy. The theologian might say: If you do not defer to revealed knowledge here, you are heretical. Fr. de Chardin would reply: At present, I am speaking only from a phenomenal point of view, which does not extend itself to revealed truths; phenomenally this is what we see, and only this. In footnotes and in the epilogue, the requirements of theology are met, and the author reveals himself as a believer. A dangerous mode of proceeding? Perhaps. With an apostolic end in view? Perhaps again, although it is evident that those he might have been most interested in converting have by no means been persuaded (see the Introduction). They have taken whatever fitted their own purposes from the long tale of evolutionary speculation, and rejected whatever they found unpalatable, and the work itself, it must be granted, is sufficiently incoherent to allow such fragmentation. But it does not seem at any point to come into direct conflict with the truths of theology, and this is probably why it has so far escaped formal censure...