Emerson presents observation and learning as basic features of human life. People encounter the world by noticing, comparing and interpreting what happens around them, and these acts of attention continually produce new understanding. Learning is therefore not confined to formal education or particular stages of life; it is an ongoing condition of being human.

Within Love, the statement supports Emerson’s wider interest in how experience changes perception and character. Relationships, emotions and encounters with other people become occasions for learning because they reveal qualities that might otherwise remain unnoticed. By calling this our “permanent state”, Emerson suggests that human beings never fully cease to be students of experience. The quotation therefore presents curiosity and observation as enduring habits through which people develop knowledge of themselves, others and the world.