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The article analyzes young Justo Arosemena’s thought, during the decades of 1830 and 1840. It confirms the reception by Arosemena, as a college student in Bogotá, of Bentham, Destutt de Tracy and Auguste Comte thought, among other notable philosophers. It describes his youth impregnated with Utilitarianism, the defence of liberties, the ideal of creating an industrious citizenship, to struggle against the "colonial siesta" instaurating the hegemony of public instructionand the renewal of juridical studies, the kingdom of public Morals, the useful knowledge, the hedonistic Ethics in those years of social romanticism. Justo Arosemena underlines the qualities of the benefits of industrial changes, of productive work, of working happiness, in order to attain progress and struggle against underdevelopment, searching for happiness and collective justice. The young Justo Arosemena discovers the isthmian misery, the dualism between the city of the elite and the poor urban zones. He experiments the failure of union with Colombia and the outrages of Mallarino-Bidlack treaty (1846). Justo Arosemena notices the scarcity of industries, the bad state of roads, the general ignorance, the lack of industrial education. He circumscribes the human groups that shape Panamanian society and dreams about the success of civil morality.