7 Platonic allegory of the cave, for example, reveals, with all lucidity and its great existential density, la precariousness of the human condition, and, accordingly, the necessity of transcendence, beyond the alleged crude "reality" of the facts. In the domain of Law, well beyond legal positivism, one is to bear in mind the reality of the human conscience21. 19. The necessity of formation and development of human conscience itself was stressed by Carl Jung22, who used to take seriously the feelings and beliefs of the human being; such necessity is rendered even more pressing in our days, in which the perception of material "progress" threatens increasingly spiritual life23. According to Jung, the intense psychological suffering leads to the isolation of the individual from the rest of "normal" persons, to the extreme loneliness, but furthermore it awakens the "creativity" of the spirit24. In expressing his fear in face of the "frightening lack of maturity" and of the "barbaric lack of conscience" of the contemporary man25, and in referring to the chiaroscuro of life, he lucidly warned that "in this world the good and the evil are more or less balanced", and this is the reason why "the victory of the good is always a special act of grace"26. 20. The present case of the "Street Children" was lodged with the Inter-American Court, and it has just been decided by it; but the denounced facts form but a microcosm of the brutality prevailing in the day-to-day scenario of the streets of Latin America and, - why not admit it? - of the streets of the whole "post-modern" world of our days. A world that appears determined to protect capitals, goods and services, but not human beings, has changed the ends for the means. A world that has subjected the majority of human beings at the service of the interests and greed of a few, has forgotten that we all are born free and equal in rights, and we all follow the path of our lives ineluctably towards death (with the crossing into eternity), which restores the equality of the existential condition of all human beings. 21. This being so, it is difficult to avoid the disturbing question: if we all arrive to this world, and depart from it, with equal fragility, of which mortality, proper to the 21 . I fear, however, that this is bound to become increasingly difficult, above all as from this beginning of the XXIst century, with the current threat of electronic screens to the written word (with its undeniable cultural substratum), and the advent of the era of so-called "virtual reality" (a contradictio in terminis), - so much en vogue nowadays, - which may, by its inadequate or exagerated use, without reflection, hinder the search for transcendence, above and beyond the shadows of the contingent and precarious human condition. 22 . C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, San Diego/N.Y./Londres, Harvest/Harcourt Brace, 1933 [reprint without date], pp. 95, 97 and 103. 23 . Ibid., pp. 204-205. To him, one had to advance towards spiritual life, so as to transcend the forces of nature (pp. 122-123 and 145); in opposing himself to the reductionism of specialized knowledge, he warned that such specialization (or fragmentation) of knowledge (above all scientific) led to the dehumanization of the contemporary world, with consequences not necessarily always beneficial (as assumed), but also catastrophic (p. 199). 24 . C.G. Jung, Psychological Reflections (1905-1961), Princeton/N.J., Bollingen Found./Princeton University Press, 1953 [reprint 1978], pp. 151 and 252. 25 . Ibid., p. 168. 26 . Ibid., pp. 234 and 236.