The Prophet · Chapter
On Laws explained
Almustafa addresses a lawyer's question about laws, arguing that people delight in both making and breaking laws, comparing them to children building sand-towers by the ocean.
What happens
Almustafa addresses a lawyer's question about laws, arguing that people delight in both making and breaking laws, comparing them to children building sand-towers by the ocean. He criticizes those who see life as a rock to be chiseled by law, and those who, like the old serpent or the overfed wedding guest, project their own limitations onto others. He urges the people to face the sun and live freely, beyond the shadows of man-made laws.
Themes in this chapter
Freedom and Responsibility
Almustafa contrasts the freedom of those who 'walk facing the sun' with the self-imposed bondage of those who live by shadows and laws.
Joy and Sorrow Duality
The ocean's laughter with both builders and destroyers of sand-towers illustrates the interplay of joy in creation and destruction.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“You delight in laying down laws, Yet you delight more in breaking them.”
You enjoy creating rules, but you enjoy breaking them even more.
Almustafa points out the human tendency to both establish and transgress laws.
“But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers, But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness?”
What about those who see life as a hard stone and law as a tool to shape it according to their own image?
Almustafa critiques those who use law to rigidly impose their will on life.
“They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.”
They perceive only their own reflections, and those reflections become their rules.
Almustafa suggests that those who turn away from the light mistake their own limited perspective for universal law.