“Ultimately, the only thing that has any importance is the Whole, in which alone unity can be effected. Parallel with (and in a sense identical with) our intellectual need of unity, we experience, deep within us, an affective and spontaneous need for union. Man is not drawn towards the One (that is, the Whole) by his reason alone, but by the full force of his whole being (is not our thought the act of our whole being?). On earth we are essentially separate, incomplete —a point made, you may remember, in Plato’s Phaedrus. We are seeking desperately for our completion; and we cannot find it by wedding ourselves to any element of the world taken in isolation. What we reach out to grasp in our aspirations is something which is diffused throughout, which permeates, everything. Fundamentally, we have but one passion: to become one with the world which envelops us without our ever being able to distinguish either its face or its heart. Would man worship woman if he did not believe that he saw the universe mirrored in her eyes? And does man continue to love woman when (by his own fault) he has reduced her to no more than one poor closed individual, opening the road for him to no further extension either of his race or of his ideal?”

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (2002-11-18). Christianity and Evolution (Harvest Book, Hb 276) (Kindle Locations 692-700). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.