A great many internal and external portents (political and social upheaval, moral and religious unease) have caused us all to feel, more or less confusedly, that something tremendous is at present taking place in the world. But what is it?
Far from being swallowed up by Evolution, Man is now engaged in transforming our earlier idea of Evolution in terms of himself, and thereafter plotting its new outline.
Beneath our eyes, extending from the electron to Man by way of the proteins, viruses, bacteria, protozoa, and metazoa, a long chain of composites is forming and unfolding, eventually attaining an astronomical degree of complexity and arrangement, and centred pari passu upon itself while at the same time it animates itself.
Why should we not simply define Life as the specific property of Matter, the Stuff of the Universe, carried by evolution into the zone of highest complexity?
If, in virtue of its especial curvature, the Universe, following the line of its principal axis, is really moving towards a state of maximal synthesis; and if, furthermore, as practical observation shows, its human particles, taken as a whole, still possess a formidable potential of synthesis: then our present situation cannot be anything but ‘energetically’ unstable.
Looking far ahead we may descry an ultimate state in which, organically associated with one another (more closely than the cells of a single brain) we shall form in our entirety a single system, ultra-complex and, in consequence, ultra-centrated.
We thought that we had reached the limit of ourselves. Now we see Mankind extending within the cone of Time beyond the individual; it coils in collectively upon itself above our heads, in the direction of some sort of higher Mankind.
A huge Consciousness in process of growth.
For the man who sees nothing at the end of the world, nothing higher than himself, daily life can only be filled with pettiness and boredom. So much fruitless effort, so many wasted moments! But to those who see the synthesis of the Spirit continuing on earth beyond their own brief existence, every act and event is charged with interest and promise.
To love is to discover and complete one’s self in someone other than oneself, an act impossible of general realisation on earth so long as each man can see in his neighbour no more than a closed fragment following its own course through the world. It is precisely this state of isolation that will end if we begin to discover in each other not merely the elements of one and the same thing, but of a single Spirit in search of itself.
Christian detachment subsists wholly in this wider attitude of mind; but instead of ‘leaving behind’ it leads on; instead of cutting off, it raises. It is no longer a break-away but a way through; no longer a withdrawal but an act of emerging.
Charity spreads like an ascending force, like a common essence at the heart of all forms of human activity, whose diversity is finally synthesised in the rich totality of a single operation.
Throughout the world at this moment, without distinction of country, class, calling, or creed, men are appearing who have begun to reason, to act, and to pray in terms of the limitless and organic dimensions of Space-Time. To the outside observer such men may still seem isolated. But they are aware of one another among themselves, they recognise each other whenever their paths cross. They know that tomorrow, rejecting old concepts, divisions, and forms, the world will see what they see and think as they do.