THE TRUE MEANING OF LIFE

  

speech delivered on

August 26th

1916, in the first

session held by the

ACJM in the city of

Guadalajara.

Among the countless crowd of ideas that flutter in the brain and that escape every day and rush in all directions, like birds of light in search of a sky to illuminate and a blue space to break with their wings; there are some that barely brush the dust of the earth, that barely touch the surface of bodies and that pass far, far away from souls and are going to get lost, sink and disappear in the confines where it falls, disappears and sinks. fragile, the crumbly, the powerless; others,like the light that comes down from the heavens to warm the cold fronds, to rejuvenate the aged trunks and dye all the buds, and like the water that falls from the firmament and moistens and makes all the germs sprout; they go to the highest and the lowest of the human spirit, they touch all the distances, they extend to all the confines and under the incontestable influence of the facts they become the supreme orientation of the intelligences, of the hearts, of the wills, in short of men and things.

And those ideas, that is to say, those that disappear and sink where what is despicable and impotent sinks and disappears, have a completely accidental and accessory character and for that reason they do not matter to humanity except from afar, and the Any discussion about them should be brief and should even be abandoned in order to fix deeply and very deeply, deeply and very deeply, the gaze of the spirit on the principles of decisive power and transcendental force. oh! And around them the most ardent of battles must be fought, the fiercest of battles must be waged and the most formidable and heated of discussions must take place, because battling, fighting and arguing around great thoughts is the same as battle, fight and discuss around the great destinies of the human race.

There, then, where an affirmation is raised, where a system arises and where a doctrine of those that seek to snatch from truth or error the supremacy over intelligences and hearts, must meet all the soldiers of thought, all the fighters of the idea; all flags must be flung into the air, all swords must be flashed across the battlefield, all bayonets must flash, all trenches must be lit up, and all positions must be fought fiercely and ardently around. And woe to him who even thinks of turning his back! The stigma of cowards will fall on your forehead like a curse. And woe to the spirits worn out by sophism, by inertia and by the rottenness of the heart! The hand of God that has accumulated the light of its thought in the brain of the leading classes, will know how to unload formidable blows on all the eminences and will know how to sink all the summits; and humanity, which is tired and sweaty at the foot of the hill waiting for the glare of the sun to break the shadow that closes the horizon, will rush down unknown and lost paths; but the day of the cataclysm will find thinkers worn out by sophistry and rottenness of the heart, and will crush them with ignorance and force fused into a single power of dissolution: barbarism. that tired and sweaty is on the slope of the hill waiting for the glare of the sun to break the shadow that closes the horizon, will rush down unknown and lost paths; but the day of the cataclysm will find thinkers worn out by sophistry and rottenness of the heart, and will crush them with ignorance and force fused into a single power of dissolution: barbarism. that tired and sweaty is on the slope of the hill waiting for the glare of the sun to break the shadow that closes the horizon, will rush down unknown and lost paths; but the day of the cataclysm will find thinkers worn out by sophistry and rottenness of the heart, and will crush them with ignorance and force fused into a single power of dissolution: barbarism.

Face to face with thoughts of a transcendental nature, all men must stop, remain standing and suspended; genius must interrogate all distances until his word, like a splendid light on the plain, illuminates all the paths that go straight to the future, and the rest of the mortals without fear and without hesitation must rush along the routes traced from the crags of the eminence.

And well: there was a terrifying and dark time like the night that put the closure of the great storms in the skies: that time is known in history by the name of Paganism. During it humanity groaned desolately under the enormous weight of the transcendental error. Lost concepts, erroneous systems and false opinions about what is above and what is below; of heaven and earth; of God and matter; from far and near; of the spirit and of the body, of man and of things. The shadow had descended to all abysses, had risen to all peaks, had blackened all horizons and had enveloped generations in the dense clouds of transcendental error.

There was another bright and brilliant time like the irradiations that the day puts on the skies in the humid, diaphanous and serene mornings of the summer season.

During it, precise and exact ideas were had about God and man, spirit and matter; from far and near; the remote point of our departure was seen with splendid clarity, the distant border where we will find rest and the place where the battles of life are fought. The luminous verb of God departed from Calvary, descended to all the abysses, lit its brilliance on all the summits, lit up all the horizons, touched all the distances and enveloped the generations in the sea of ​​light of transcendental truth. oh! But the error did not know nor did he want to declare himself defeated, and he continued, according to the expression of Count de Maistre, preparing the great conspiracy against the truth. The rebellion broke out at once and at all points, it shook all systems, shook all doctrines and scrambled all ideas. And those who yesterday in tight crowds and with a firm and sure step marched towards the east, had to stop for a moment; they entered into the confusion of thought, which is darker and blacker than the confusion of words, they could not understand each other and dispersed to search for the truth, some there where the sun goes to sleep every day; and others, there in the confines where the light never turns on or goes off.

The disintegration of the spirits has come; systems have been multiplied and individualized; the tight and strong bundle of intelligences and hearts formed by the truth has been broken; The dissolution of ideas has come about, and the anarchy of understandings has taken hold of the entire humanity, which is the generating cause of all anarchies. The life of the people overflows along lost paths and the present age is under the enormous weight of transcendental error.

To occupy myself with pointing out each one of the transcendental errors that are suffered in our days would be to tire your attention quite a lot and go too far, and for this reason I will only try for now to analyze the true meaning of life.

That the concept of life is one of transcendental force is made very clear by the fact that the individual and collective orientation of men depends on it; and that the generations of today suffer a great error on this point, is shown by the painful spectacle that modern societies offer with the use they make of their energies.

The question can be put in the following way: What is the true meaning of life? Or in other words: What use should we make of this torrent of energy that circulates through our arteries and that we have all called life? Teodoro Jouffroy, that great philosopher who groaned desolately when he felt in his brain the emptiness that religious denial opens, wrote these or similar words: "there is a small book that is placed in the hands of man in the first years of his existence, and it provides a satisfactory response and solution to the great problems that worry thinkers and grip their hearts: do you want to know where you come from, where you are and where you are going? Well, all you have to do is open the catechism and the solution to these questions will be known at once."

Well, now, in order to solve the problem of the meaning of life, I could do it by repeating to you once more what you have been told so many times: man has been placed in the world so that he loves God above all things and his neighbor as himself. But although it is true that the truth is only found at one point, nevertheless it can be reached by various paths, and we are now going to make an effort to solve this problem by appealing to a procedure, if not completely unknown, at least not very trite.

More than once has that splendid vision traced with a master's hand by the brush of the author of "Quo vadis?" and you have contemplated old Rome enveloped in the torrents of its voluptuousness, its glory, its power and its strength, and you have also perceived two great figures: one that is the symbol of a people in dissolution, and another that it is the symbol of the resurgence of fallen humanity: they are Petronius and Paul of Tarsus. The disciple of Christ and that of Epicureus met face to face and the discussion began: Greece, said Petronius, in the brilliant outlines of its marbles, in the magnificent strokes of the brushstrokes of its painters and in the sound rhythm of its immortal stanzas , has given beauty to Humanity; Rome in the overwhelming impetus of her legions, in the splendor of his conquests and in the sword of his captains he has given him power and glory: and what do you Christians bring to the human race? Pablo de Tarso stood up as tall as he was, fixed deeply on the pagan those eyes that had seen without blinking all the tyrants, and then like a torrent that falls off the cliff he made his voice heard grave, solemn and incontestable and said: we bring love .

Now, the proposed problem about the true meaning of life is resolved with Paul of Tarsus's response: and we can affirm that the meaning of life is found in love. And it is not a matter of mere words, nor is it feminine mysticism, much less philosophical dogmatism, no: it is a truth that throws analysis on intelligences and that falls on spirits to never rise again.

We surprise life with different degrees of power and strength in the different beings that make up the Universe. Along the immense plain and on the escarpments of the peak we find it at the precise moments when the germs sprout in the light of day and when the fronds are rejuvenated and cover the bareness of their trunks and branches with the greenery of spring. oh! But around it and in its center there are no complaints that arise, no joys that awaken, no bitterness that rises, no pain that is remembered, and that is why the scattered echoes of the songs of war or of the harmonies that are and around the dead. We surprise life with a greater degree of power and strength in the animal: and there among the greenery of the foliage and the trunks of the forest there are pupils that light up,

Finally, in man we find life in a higher degree; It is not the impetus that rejuvenates the forests and that breaks the resistance of the earth and brings out the fertilized germs; It is not the sense that when it comes into contact with matter, it shudders and then shakes and powerfully pushes the blood out of our arteries, no: it is the thought that flashes in our brain, like lightning on stormy nights; it is the idea that through the shadows in which the world of bodies surrounds us, sparks and traces its traces of brilliance that do not go out; it is, in short, that power that takes to the depths of our bones and puts in the depths of our entrails, a shock felt by all and known by all and that dilates the heart, that maddens the head and makes the brain jump. soul of joy: love. The analysis, then, of our nature teaches us that all the powers accumulated in man must tend to a single purpose, and must be concentrated in a single point: love. The vegetative power would be useless if it were not ordered to the sensitive power; this in turn would be, if it were not to the intellect, and the latter if it were not ordered to the will. Love thus constitutes the true meaning of life; but that love must have the infinite and man as its target. The infinite, because man, who is capable of conceiving the immense, is his energies at the service of evil and error; that of those who have loved the truth and the good to the point of sacrifice, and that of the lukewarm and indifferent who have wanted to see the great combat with their arms crossed. and they must concentrate on a single point: love. The vegetative power would be useless if it were not ordered to the sensitive power; this in turn would be, if it were not to the intellect, and the latter if it were not ordered to the will. Love thus constitutes the true meaning of life; but that love must have the infinite and man as its target. The infinite, because man, who is capable of conceiving the immense, is his energies at the service of evil and error; that of those who have loved the truth and the good to the point of sacrifice, and that of the lukewarm and indifferent who have wanted to see the great combat with their arms crossed. and they must concentrate on a single point: love. The vegetative power would be useless if it were not ordered to the sensitive power; this in turn would be, if it were not to the intellect, and the latter if it were not ordered to the will. Love thus constitutes the true meaning of life; but that love must have the infinite and man as its target. The infinite, because man, who is capable of conceiving the immense, is his energies at the service of evil and error; that of those who have loved the truth and the good to the point of sacrifice, and that of the lukewarm and indifferent who have wanted to see the great combat with their arms crossed. and this if it were not ordered to the will. Love thus constitutes the true meaning of life; but that love must have the infinite and man as its target. The infinite, because man, who is capable of conceiving the immense, is his energies at the service of evil and error; that of those who have loved the truth and the good to the point of sacrifice, and that of the lukewarm and indifferent who have wanted to see the great combat with their arms crossed. and this if it were not ordered to the will. Love thus constitutes the true meaning of life; but that love must have the infinite and man as its target. The infinite, because man, who is capable of conceiving the immense, is his energies at the service of evil and error; that of those who have loved the truth and the good to the point of sacrifice, and that of the lukewarm and indifferent who have wanted to see the great combat with their arms crossed.

And Humanity and History have cast their anathemas and curses on the former; about those who have not been able to make themselves loved or hated because they have not known how to conquer the smiles of the heavens or provoke the ravages of the abyss, the silence, the oblivion that falls on the tombs and that is the last and definitive death on the land. Oh! But History and Humanity have wanted to reserve applause, praise and apotheosis for those who have loved with delirium, madness and even sacrifice, the great, the noble, the holy, the infinite and what deserves our compassion. , our support and our help, in a word: God and man.