"On Laws" Summary

Answering a lawyer about laws, Almustafa observes that people delight in laying down laws and more so in breaking them, like children building sandcastles and then smashing them with glee. The ocean, however, brings in more sand and laughs with the innocent. To those who view life as a rock, the law is a chisel for carving their own likenesses. Consider cripples who hate dancers and oxen that love the yoke and consider wild animals vagrants. Consider the old serpent that cannot shed its skin and condemns others' nakedness and shamelessness and the person who comes early to the wedding feast, overeats and goes away condemning feasts as illegal. These stand in the sun with their backs turned, so they see only their shadows, the laws. They bend over to trace these. When one faces the sun, images drawn...