What does this quote mean?
What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.

"Adults are skeptical and overthinking all the time. They should learn from children who are the best message of believing in your own conscience. The children are so unconcerned about the conformity and they don't think all the time and live the way they want.'

Explanation:

The given excerpt is taken from the popular essay titled 'Self-Reliance' by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through this essay, the key message that Emerson conveys to the readers is to believe in their own selves and their conscience instead of blindly conforming to societal norms.

In the given excerpt, Emerson addresses the adults and asks them to be like the little children. He says that the adults spend most of their time overthinking and questioning their own selves in order to adjust themselves to society while the children are so carefree, indifferent, and the unrestrained channels of truth who have no association with the societal expectations. According to him, they are not underdeveloped but they are the ones who truly represent nature with the highest level of truth and integrity, and calls them the purest and the most sacred.