Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Montaigne; or, the Skeptic." Representative Men. Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1850, p. 168.
The law is far behind science in many areas, but one dramatic one is the notion of life itself. For the criminal law and for benefits entitlement, when life begins and when it ends are traditionally important. Yet is a very complex question in many cases. Abortion is another controversial area. Under ancient Jewish Law, a fetus is considered a living person when the crown of the head can be viewed from the mother’s vagina. Modern science has demonstrated that depending on how you define life, the fetus itself is alive during the pregnancy. But if one goes further with modern science, the sperm and egg cells are alive before conception. So are millions of other cells in the human body which we kill routinely—some intentionally as when we take an antibiotic to terminate “undesirable” bacteria. Many orthodox Hindus who will not kill living animals will kill living cells such as when they eat yogurt. Scientists have in recent times resisted trying to define the term “living” not only because of its complexity, but because almost any definition would soon be obsoleted by new knowledge which is accumulating so rapidly. Science simplifies and clarified many phenomena, but also makes others much more complex.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
