The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: is intelligible to them. It is simply and sternly impossible for
the English public, at this moment, to understand any thoughtful
writing,--so incapable of thought has it become in its insanity of
avarice. Happily, our disease is, as yet, little worse than this
incapacity of thought; it is not corruption of the inner nature; we
ring true still, when anything strikes home to us; and though the
idea that everything should "pay" has infected our every purpose so
deeply, that even when we would play the good Samaritan, we never
take out our two pence and give them to the host, without saying,
"When I come again, thou shalt give me fourpence," there is a
capacity of noble passion left in our hearts' core. We show it in
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