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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: habit in a convulsive perseverance, while the mind is gone. Our
National wish and purpose are only to be amused; our National
religion is the performance of church ceremonies, and preaching of
soporific truth (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while
we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is
fastening on us, as a feverous disease of parched throat and
wandering eyes--senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that
word DIS-Ease, the Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the
entire moral state of our English Industry and its Amusements!
When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their
work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower;--when they are
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