2 determine their legal consequences. This gap ought to be filled, bearing in mind, to start with, that we all live in time, and that the legal norms are created, interpreted and applied likewise in time. 4. Time keeps on being a great mystery surrounding human existence. Human knowledge of the extreme frontiers of life (birth and death) continues to be limited, and such frontiers have become "more mobile" as a consequence of the cultural changes and the technological development, what attributes an even greater responsibility to the jurists, who ought to be attentive to the ethical codes and to the cultural manifestations in evolution5. In thus acting, far from neglecting the universal standards of respect for human rights, they will be contributing to affirm them with even more vigour, discarding the distortions of the so-called cultural "relativism" (cf. infra). The very conscience of time is "a very late product of human civilization humana", and when the human being "a pris connaissance du problème du temps, quand il ne s'est plus cantonné dans le cercle étroit de ses désirs et besoins immédiats, mais a commencé à rechercher l'origine des choses, il n'a pu trouver qu'une origine mythique, non historique"6. 5. Despite all that has been written on the subject, the very origin of the cultures still continues without an answer7; and time and space, which they seek to explain, appear ultimately as mental creations8 of the social conscience, which allow to conceive a unified and coherent cosmos9. Of the essence of cultural life are "the perception and the awareness of time", which, in turn, constitute component elements of "the solidarity of human generations which succeded each other and return, repeating each other as the stations"10. Time was even considered - as in 5 . S. Rodotà, "Law and Moral Dilemmas Affecting Life and Death - A General Presentation of the Issues", in: Law and Moral Dilemmas Affecting Life and Death (Proceedings of the 20th Colloquy on European Law, Glasgow, September 1990), Strasbourg, Council of Europe, 1992, pp. 13-14. - In fact, there is no social milieu in which collective representations pertaining to its origin and to its destiny are not found. There is a spiritual legacy which is transmitted, with the passing of time, from generation to generation, conforming a "perfect spiritual continuity between generations". Hence the relevance of the conscience of living in time, and of the burial rites; E. Durkheim, Las Formas Elementales de la Vida Religiosa, Madrid, Alianza Ed., 1993 (reed.), pp. 393, 419, 436, 443 and 686. 6 . Ernst Cassirer, Essai sur l'homme, Paris, Éd. de Minuit, 1975, p. 243. 7 . Ibid., p. 47. 8 . This is what Karl Popper ponders, to whom "space and time do not form part of the empirical, real world, of things and events, but are rather part of our mental constitution, of our apparatus to grasp the world". K. Popper, En Busca de un Mundo Mejor, Barcelona, Ed. Paidós, 1996, pp. 171-173. 9 . A.Y. Gurevitch, "El Tiempo como Problema de Historia Cultural", in Las Culturas y el Tiempo, Salamanca/Paris, Ed. Sígueme/UNESCO, 1979, pp. 260-261. In this way, "converted into ruler of time", the human being "is also dominated by it" (ibid., p. 261). The perception of time came to help the human being to overcome "the briefness and the unicity of his life"; with that, and the life in his social environment, the human being thought that he could "deceive death" (ibid., p. 263). 10 . Ibid., pp. 280 and 264, and cf. p. 272.