Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
James Anthony FroudeRead
Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them.
Interpretation
Human laws attempt to reflect universal truths but are inherently flawed.
This quote suggests that the laws created by humans are mere approximations of the deeper, eternal laws that govern the universe. It implies that while we strive to establish justice and order through our laws, they are imperfect reflections of a higher moral truth that we can only partially understand.
In practice
In a philosophical debate about the nature of justice.
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man to his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. As I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science.
Our permanent address is tommorrow.
There is an ever-widening gap between what science allows and what we should actually do. There are many doors science can open that should be kept closed, on prudential or ethical grounds.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
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