Life & Wisdom Quote by John Dryden

“Self-defence is Nature’s eldest law” carries the cool authority of something meant to sound older than politics and sturdier than theology. Dryden, a Restoration poet who made his living close to power, isn’t praising violence so much as laundering it through inevitability. By calling self-defense “Nature’s” law, he shifts the argument from the courtroom to the cosmos: if survival is the first rule, then the moral burden slides off the individual and onto the order of things. It’s a rhetorical hack that still works because it borrows the prestige of the natural world to justify human choices that are rarely as clean as the phrase implies.

The subtext is anxious and modern: civilization is a thin agreement, and when it cracks, people reach for first principles. “Eldest” is doing heavy lifting. It suggests that ethics arrives late to the party, trailing behind hunger, fear, and the instinct to protect one’s body, family, property, or status. Dryden’s line flatters the reader who wants to feel both threatened and righteous at once.

Context matters: the late 17th century is a world of contested sovereignty, shifting religious settlements, and state violence dressed up as legitimacy. In that environment, “self-defense” can mean a mugger in an alley, but it can also mean a nation, a monarch, or a faction declaring its aggression preemptive. Dryden’s genius is the line’s portability: it can steady a trembling conscience or sharpen a blade, all while claiming it’s simply reporting the oldest rule on earth.