A second reading of this work, after two years of lying fallow in my mind, allowed Chardin’s full vision to unfold before me. Writing in manifestly visual language, Chardin presents the sweep of evolution as a unified whole, a process of Mind gathering itself towards its own center. Some may object to his Christian orientation, but Chardin does well to save his explicit observations on his faith for an epilogue. Frankly, I think he stretches his argument there, but it can be clipped without doing violence to the primary text. The value of the book for me is that it positions Man as exponent and extension of all phenomena of which the universe consists. [New York: Harper & Row]
