The significance in terms of “phase” or “stage” has not been sufficiently recognized or made use of: I mean that of association or, better still, social organization. No sooner is it constituted by the grouping together of elementary particles, than the living element, whatever its degree of internal complexity, begins to reproduce itself. But the process does not end there. When it exists in sufficient numbers the separate element tends to link up with others of its kind so as to form with them a more or less differentiated organic whole.
Because we are a part of it, because the rhythm of its growth is infinitely slow in comparison with our own, and because its grandeur overwhelms us, Mankind, in its total evolution, escapes our intuitive grasp.
In what direction and in what form are we to look for this new state of being which we expect to be born of our future development? Is the Universe, of its nature, scattering itself in sparks; or on the contrary is it tending to concentrate in a single center of light?
Immersed in the Universe as we are, we have no means of getting outside it, even momentarily, to see if it is going anywhere, and if so where. We have no periscope; we are navigating in the depths.
Entropy and life; backward and forward: two complementary expressions of the arrow of time.
What course are we to adopt in order that our personal efforts may most effectively contribute to the terrestrial consciousness which we must strive to heighten and extend? Is it to be a jealously guarded fostering of our own individuality, achieved in increasing isolation; or in the association and giving of ourselves to the collective whole of Mankind? Are we to reject or accept human socialization, elect for a divergent or a convergent world? Where is the truth? Which is the right way?
By virtue of the emergence of Thought a special and novel environment has been evolved among human individuals within which they acquire the faculty of associating together, and reacting upon one another, no longer primarily for the preservation and continuation of the species but for the creation of a common consciousness.
Love has always been carefully eliminated form realist and positivist concepts of the world; but sooner or later we shall have to acknowledge that it is the fundamental impulse for Life, or, if you prefer, the one natural medium in which the rising course of evolution can proceed. With love omitted there is truly nothing ahead of us except the forbidding prospect of standardization and enslavement—the doom of ants and termites. It is through love and within love that we must look for the deepening of our deepest self, in the life-giving coming together of humankind.
We may have supposed when a moment ago we were bidding farewell to a Universe of divergence and plurality, that some part of our individual riches must be absorbed by our immersion in Life as a whole. Now we see that it is precisely through this apparent sacrifice that we may hope to attain the high peak of personality which we thought we must renounce.