WRITINGS IN TIME OF WAR
Pierre Teilhard deChardin
Written at the front and in the trenches during World War I, these essays contain the core of Teilhard deChardin's thought. His central theme is the unity of all life.
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"The interplay of the monads would be unintelligible if an aura did not extend from one to another: something, that is, which is peculiar to each one of them and at the same time common to all."
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"Charity [love] safeguards the development of the universe and keeps it to the true path of its progress. Moral effort is the continuation in our souls of the same dynamic effort that gave us our bodies."
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"In the domain of morality the Divine and the Terrestrial meet and are fused into one."
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"In each one of the souls that is born from it, the cosmos is incessantly fulfilling its finest hopes."
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"The final purpose of providence is the influence of the transcendent Centre whose unerring action can infallibly guide chance toward its determined end."
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"The more we lose all foothold in the darkness and instability of the future, the more deeply we penetrate into God."
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"In the material universe it is Spirit, and in Spirit it is the moral sphere, which are eminently the PRESENT centre in which life develops. It is into this flexible core of ourselves, accordingly, where divine grace mingles with the natural impulses of the Earth, that we have forcefully to direct the power of faith."
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"The Real incessantly reawakens us to an impassioned awareness of a wider expansion and an all-embracing unity."
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"In everything in me that has subsistence and resonance, in everything that enlarges me from within, that arouses me, attracts me, or wounds me from without, it is you, Lord, who are at work upon me – it is you who mould and spiritualize my formless clay – you that change me into yourself."
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| 10 |
"The sum of our souls is the potentiality of Some Thing, not yet made, which is to emerge from their mass. Collective aspirations accompany and assist this organic work, greater than ourselves, which is effected in each one of us. It is the function of Morality to guide our free decisions into fruitful and obedient co-operation in this task."
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"After each new crisis, mankind has to yield to the evidence that it has changed for the better and has made progress; for life, and life alone, knows what is best for its children, and, what is more, reality always follows the most favourable line of development."
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"We can count upon creative energy awaiting us, ready to transform us in a way that goes beyond anything that the eye of man has seen or his ear has heard."
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"There is only ONE SINGLE CENTER in the universe…it impels the whole of creation along one and the same line, first towards the fullest development of consciousness, and later towards the highest degree of holiness."
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| 14 |
"Each one of us is linked by all the material, organic and psychic strands of his being to all that surrounds him. Not only is he caught up in a network, he is carried along, too, by a stream. All around us, in whatever direction we look, there are both links and currents."
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"Human monads are atoms immersed in, nourished by, and carried along by one and the same unfathomable primitive substance; they are elements that are combined and given a special character by a network of intimate interconnections, in order so to constitute a higher unity."
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"Each monad is to some degree the centre of the entire Cosmos, resting upon and at the same time supporting its fabric."
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"God, the personal and loving Infinite, is the Source, the motive Force and the End of the Universe."
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| 18 |
"There is in the universe only one single individuality (one single monad), that of the whole."
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| 19 |
"I believe that the world records everything good and useful that is done in it; it notes and assimilates to itself every movement and every impulse that is fitted to harmonize with its own becoming, of whose real goodness there can be no doubt."
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| 20 |
"Unity is destined to become more and more fully realized."
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| 21 |
"Blessings on the philosophy that shows us that the cohesion of things is destined to be completed!"
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"Every being…has its own particular essence crowned by a certain quality, a certain form (common to all) which makes it an integral, rightly adapted, part of the single Whole with which it shares a natural harmony."
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| 23 |
"Every encounter that brings me a caress, that spurs me on, that comes as a shock to me, that bruises or breaks me, is a contact with the hand of God, which assumes countless forms and yet always commands our worship. Every element of which I am made up is an overflow from God."
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"The deeper I descend into myself, the more I find God at the heart of my being."
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"Every being can subsist and hold together only through confluence with others."
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