Ralph Waldo Emerson：Essays, Excerpt 113

Prudence does not go behind nature and ask whence it is? It takes the laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, and keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good. It respects space and time, climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity,[665] growth and death. There revolve, to give bound and period to his being on all sides, the sun and moon, the great formalists in the sky: here lies stubborn matter, and will not swerve from its chemical routine. Here is a planted globe, pierced and belted with natural laws and fenced and distributed externally with civil partitions and properties which impose new restraints on the young inhabitant.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16643
Locator：Excerpt 113 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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