Teilhard de Chardin and Senghor on the civilization of the universal

CONCLUSION

One may genuinely wonder how Teilhard de Chardin could postulate such a phenomenon. The answer is simply that as a Geologist and Palaeontologist, he studied the past and his studies of the past enabled him to establish knowledge of the future. The «vision of the past» helped him to foresee the «future of man»^40(*) as he writes in a letter of September 8^th 1935:

Le passé m'a révélé la construction de l'Avenir... Précisément pour parler avec quelque autorité de l'Avenir, il m'est essentiel de m'établir avec plus de solidité que jamais comme un spécialiste du Passé.^41(*)

He believed that it is only by carefully studying the past that we can anticipate the future and understand the present. In this context therefore, we consider Teilhard de Chardin a Prophet of globalisation.

Faced with so much destruction at this beginning of the 3^rd millennium, we can still affirm that the planetary consciousness of Teilhard de Chardin is taking place; it is a process that is certifiable. Here lies the intrinsic value of this French Jesuit priest, as Charles RAVEN says:

It is perhaps Teilhard's greatest service to our time that having accepted the whole cosmic process as one, continuous, complexified and convergent, he can regard it with an unfaltering hope. Anyone who enters into the significance of evolution will find in the record of its evidence of progress and therefore of encouragement, not as an exception, but in its diverse forms and at every level verifiable and conclusive.^42(*)

The thoughts of Teilhard de Chardin had a great influence on later and even contemporary thinkers and writers like Léopold SEDAR SENGHOR who made of Teilhard de Chardin's views on the Civilization of the Universal, the foundation of his African Socialism.

CHAPTER TWO

TEILHARD DE CHARDIN ADOPTED AND ADAPTED BY SENGHOR

* ⁴⁰ These are titles of two of Teilhard de Chardin's works: The Vision of the Past and The Future of Man.

* ⁴¹ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, L'avenir de l'homme, Paris, 1959, P. 13.

* ⁴² Charles Raven, Teilhard de Chardin Scientist and Seer, London, 1962, p. 75.