Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French theologian, Jesuit priest, and paleontologist/geologist who took part in the discovery of Peking Man, and was later unjustly accused by Stephen Jay Gould of participating in the Peking Man fraud (see Gould's book The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, and see Charles Blinderman's book The Piltdown Inquest for a refutation). Teilhard was forbidden to publish his writings during his lifetime, the 1950 encyclical 'Humani Generis' condemned several of his opinions, and in 1962, the Holy Office issued a 'Monitum' or warning that his books contained ambiguities' and 'serious errors,' that offended Catholic doctrine. But more recently, Pope John Paul II cited Teilhard approvingly, as has Benedict XVI. This book contains essays written by Teilhard over a period of thirty years, and (like his masterwork The Phenomenon of Man) was first published posthumously.
Here are some representative quotations from the book:
"Confronted by the phenomenon of 'socialisation' in which Mankind is irresistably involved, do we seek to know how to act that we may better conform to the secret processes of the world of which we are a part? Then of the alternatives that are offered we must choose the one which seems best able to develop and preserve in us the highest degree of consciousness. If we turn out to have been wrong in this, then the Universe has no less gone astray."
"But is it not in itself a consolation and a source of strength to know that Life has an objective; and that the objective is a summit; and that the summit, towards which all our striving must be directed, can only be attained by our drawing together, all of us more and more closely and in every sense---individually, socially, nationally and racially?"
"The basic characteristic of Man, the root of all his perfections, is his gift of consciousness... But this power of reflection, when restricted to the individual, is only partial and rudimentary... Reflection can only be developed in communion with others. It is essentially a social phenomenon."
"In exploding the atom we took our first bite at the fruit of the great discovery, and this was enough for a taste to enter our mouths that can never be washed away: the taste for super-creativeness."
"(B)iological purposiveness ... is not everywhere apparent in the living world, but that it only shows itself above a certain level... Below this critical point everything happens (perhaps?) as though the rise of Life were automatic. But above it the forces of free choice and inner direction come to light, and from this moment it is they that tend to take charge."