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About this quote

What does it mean?
Emerson notes a fundamental disconnect between laws governing humans and those governing objects or nature.
In plain terms
There are separate rules for people and for things that do not match.
What can you take from it?
Recognize the gap between human and natural laws.

Where it applies

  • ethics
  • science
  • governance

Putting it to work

  • policy making
  • ethical reasoning
  • study of nature

Questions to consider

  • Where do human rules conflict with nature?
  • Can these laws be reconciled?

Another view

Human laws often claim to reflect natural laws but may not.

More from Ralph Waldo Emerson

  1. For nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave t…

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  2. Olympian bards who sung Divine Ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.

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  3. Whoso walketh in solitude, And inhabiteth the wood, Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird, Before the money-loving herd, Into that forester shall pass From thes…

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