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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: literature, despising science, despising art, despising nature,
despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you
think these are harsh or wild words? Have patience with me but a
little longer. I will prove their truth to you, clause by clause.
(I.) I say first we have despised literature. What do we, as a
nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether
on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend
on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call
him mad--a bibliomaniac. But you never call any one a horsemaniac,
though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not
hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower
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