This paper argues that comparative law should become a core subject in all law degree programmes. By ‘core’ is meant a progression subject that will take the student through a three-year programme emphasising not what the law is but how one should think like a lawyer. Comparative law is ideal for this task because it emphasises two fundamental questions: what is ‘comparison’? And what is ‘law’? The paper demonstrates, first, how the rule model of legal knowledge is inadequate when it comes to comparing law and, second, how the techniques of comparison can reveal this inadequacy. These demonstrations are primarily founded upon a distinction, explained in the paper, between symbolic and non-symbolic knowledge.