From the "Phenomenon of Man " (Teilhard de Chardin)

Man came silently into the world. As a matter of fact he trod so softly that, when we first catch sight of him as revealed by those indestructible stone instruments, we find him sprawling all over the old world from the Cape of Good Hope to Peking.

Without doubt he already speaks and lives in groups ; he already makes fire. After all, this is surely what we ought to expect. As we know, each time a new living form rises up before us out of the depths of history, it is always complete and already legion.

Thus in the eyes of science, which at long range can only see things in bulk, the ' first man is, and can only be, a crowd, and his infancy is made up of thousands and thousands of years.'

It is inevitable that this situation should be disappointing, leaving our curiosity unsatisfied. For what most interests us is precisely what happened during those first thousands of years.

And still more, what markcd the first critical moment. Dearly would we love to know what those first parents of ours looked likc, thc ones that stood just this side of the threshold of reflection.

As I have already said, that threshold had to be crossed in a single stride. Imagine the past to have been photographed section by section : at that critical moment of initial hominisation, what should we see when we developed our film ?

If we have understood the limits of enlargement imposed by nature on the instrument which helps us to study the landscape