1Humanity, its hopes now lost, resigns itself then to following the road of inexorable age, putting into practice certain rules cited by Science.
2Destined only to delay as long as possible the approach of the skeletal vision of Death.
3“Youth, Divine Treasure, you depart never to return!
4When I wish to weep I do not weep, and at times I weep without wishing to” — so sang, sadly, Rubén Darío, the famous Nicaraguan poet, the nightingale of America, who also said: “Alas!
5Forever I leave exultation behind; fair youth has now passed — the music of the soul and its melody, the dreams of enthusiasm and of virtue.
6Gone, alas! are the hours of gladness, and upon its hungry breast, the coffin; and, sole future, only hope, Death, with a giant's strides, advances.
7The Master of poetry, in these profound verses, left us a terrible lament, a deep anguish, tears of sadness — the despair of the soul which, like a mute witness, watches the bricks of its Temple wear away one by one until the whole edifice of our physical body comes down in total collapse.
8What a sublime and grandiose spectacle, for those who know and feel the immortality of the soul, when the soul, in one last effort — having spent its treasure with full hands, believing it inexhaustible — still tries to cling to its now worm-eaten house, which once was a synthesis of joy, youth and hopes, a mighty edifice able to defy the winds and the tides!
9According to the wise and divine Universal Laws, we know that matter is subject to constant evolution, that all bodies are nothing but matter in different degrees of development; and since the Law of Evolution is a universal law of nature, man has only to place himself within its conditions in order to understand it, to experiment with it, and thus to be its efficient collaborator.
10It is then that the immortal Soul, on abandoning its envelope, will see that this is like a worn-out garment which must be abandoned, like an old and useless house, in order to put on another, new and more lasting — so as to continue along the road of Eternal Life and study another chapter of the great and inexhaustible Book of Immortality.
11Here the following questions arise: Is it possible to prolong life?
12Is it possible to maintain a constant youth in our physical body?
13Is it possible to keep all the material of the Temple of the Soul in perfect condition, so as to counteract the too-rapid wearing of those materials?
14Can the life and youth of the body be prolonged, so that it may transmit to its dweller, the Soul, the maximum of the experiences necessary to its swifter evolution?
15These are the questions we shall try to elucidate and, to that end, we shall have to divide these teachings into three parts: 1st — The historical and scientific part, particularly the medical.
162nd — The philosophical part.
173rd — The spiritual part.
18But before treating these three parts in the following articles, this clarification is necessary: · 13
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.