It is common knowledge, of course, that cultural periodicals of Hispanic America tend to have a brief existence, one that is sometimes limited to the initial volume or even to the initial number, and frequently these appear in small tiradas. Too often, then, their contents slip into oblivion and their writers into obscurity. If some of these writings perhaps deserve no better fate, others surely do, and the practice of reuniting such scattered and evanescent products of the author’s inspiration between two covers insures longer survival and greater convenience. If the essays of Edmundo O’Gorman are less exposed to neglect than those of others, the convenience of bringing together these six valuable studies is obvious. Edmundo O’Gorman is no conventional historian content to assemble his sources and arrange them in a logical sequence. Rather, he is concerned with the philosophy—even the metaphysics—of History, and he frequently refers to his disquisitions as meditaciones. But this designation is misleading, for he subjects his data to an uncompromising analysis that compels the close attention of the reader to his reasoning. His exposition, however, is at all times clear and precise.
The six contributions here reproduced have appeared in various places during the past quarter century, and they range from reflections on city planning in colonial Mexico City to native art, Friar Servando Teresa de Mier, the Revolution of Ayutla, Positivism in the days of Justo Sierra and Porfirio Díaz, and the historiography of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Especially enlightening to the reviewer were the long, psychological appraisal of Father Servando de Mier’s personality and career, and the equally long discussion of the Precedentes y sentido de la Revolución de Ayutla which is an admirable synthesis and evaluation of the confusing political and social history of Mexico from the accession of Iturbide to a phantom throne to the beginnings of the Reform movement. It is good indeed to have these “meditations” of Edmundo O’Gorman so readily accessible.