Science Quote by Warren De la Rue

There is a chill to De la Rue's phrasing that feels less like a moral lesson than a lab report on inevitability. "Nature's laws must be obeyed" isn’t advice; it’s a verdict. Coming from a 19th-century scientist, the line carries the era’s hardening faith that the universe is governed by rules indifferent to human wishes. The rhetorical move is clever: he borrows the language of duty ("must be obeyed") to describe what is, at bottom, non-negotiable physics. You don’t negotiate with gravity. You don’t petition entropy.

The second clause sharpens the threat. Decline doesn’t just happen; it "begins" like a clock starting, then "goes on with accelerated rapidity" like a system slipping into runaway feedback. That acceleration is the point: De la Rue is invoking the unsettling idea that deterioration is not linear. Once limits are crossed - of heat, resources, stability, health - the slide speeds up, and the comforting fantasy of gradual correction vanishes.

In context, this sits neatly inside Victorian anxieties and ambitions: industrial expansion, grand engineering, imperial confidence, and the dawning realization that progress has constraints. Scientific authority here performs a cultural function: it disciplines optimism. The subtext is a warning to any project - personal, political, technological - that assumes it can outpace the underlying rules. De la Rue isn’t romanticizing nature; he’s reminding you nature keeps the ledger, and the interest compounds.