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Author : Teilhard de Chardin Pierre
Title : Science and Christ
Year : 1955

Link download : Teilhard_de_Chardin_Pierre_-_Science_and_Christ.zip

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE HUMAN BODY ? Even a single attempt to determine exactly what the body of a living being consists in, is suffident to make one realise that 'my body' -an entity that is so clear wh en we remain in the practical sphere-is, when we come to theory, extremely difficult to define and pin clown. We may decide to restrict the body to those elements that live strictly with the life of the living being: and in that case we find that it is reduced to a mere tangle of nervous fibres. Or we may try to extend it to everything that is subject to the domina ting and organising activity of the soul: and in that case we have to include in it elements that are manifestly without life in the normal sense of the word (such as the inanimate cells of bone and blood), or possess a life that is completely autonomous (amoebae)-and of these it is well-nigh impossible to hold that they are the personal, incommunicable, property of the living being. We meet the difficulty in a new and more lively form when we pass from just a body in general, to the body of Christ. What, in Christ, is the matter which undergoes the hypostatic union, what is the matter that claims our worship? Are we to worship the drops of blood that feil from our Master on the blackthorn in the hedgerow ? ...