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“Natural Law,” a Phrase of Superstition.—When you talk so delightedly of Nature acting according to law, you must either assume that all things in Nature follow their law from a voluntary obedience imposed by themselves—in which case you admire the morality of Nature: or you are enchanted with the idea of a creative mechanician, who has made a most cunning watch with human beings as accessory ornaments.—Necessity, through the expression, “conformity to law,” then becomes more human and a coign of refuge in the last instance for mythological reveries.
“Natural Law,” a Phrase of Superstition.—When you talk so delightedly of Nature acting according to law, you must either assume that all things in Nature follow their law from a voluntary obedience imposed by themselves—in which case you admire the morality of Nature: or you are enchanted with the idea of a creative mechanician, who has made a most cunning watch with human beings as accessory ornaments.—Necessity, through the expression, “conformity to law,” then becomes more human and a coign of refuge in the last instance for mythological reveries.
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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- Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
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- Human, All-Too-Human, Part 2 (1913 English edition) (1913 AD)
Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions, complete printed aphorism 9; Paul V. Cohn translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1913
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Author of Human, All-Too-Human, here represented by complete numbered passages in Helen Zimmern’s 1909 and Paul V. Cohn’s 1913 English editions. Catalogue lifetime 1844–1900; historical philosophical arguments and dated viewpoints require context, rather than treating every sentence as general advice.
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