The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The laws of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
Interpretation
Nature laws guide actions but require an initiating cause to produce effects.
This quote emphasizes the distinction between laws and the agents that act upon those laws. While natural laws provide a framework for understanding the world, they do not execute actions or create results on their own; instead, a cause must engage with these laws in order to produce tangible outcomes, similar to how architectural guidelines do not construct buildings by themselves without the intervention of skilled architects and builders.
In practice
This quote could be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of causality and agency in scientific contexts.
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. To this chiefly it is owing that we find sects and parties in most branches of science [and politics]; and disputes that are carried on from age to age, without being brought to issue.
It appears evident, therefore, that those actions only can truly be called virtuous, and deserving of moral approbation, which the agent believed to be right, and to which he was influenced, more or less, by that belief.
Every indication of wisdom, taken from the effect, is equally an indication of power to execute what wisdom planned.
Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.
I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development.
He said, "I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god.
I began life as an absolute monarchist - on condition, of course, that I be that monarch.
You're like the thief who isn't the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he's going to jail. - Rhett Butler
It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us.
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