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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: will cease to be popular. The change will of course be slow, and
people will not be conscious of it. They will not say 'We will not
war against France because her prose is perfect,' but because the
prose of France is perfect, they will not hate the land.
Intellectual criticism will bind Europe together in bonds far
closer than those that can be forged by shopman or sentimentalist.
It will give us the peace that springs from understanding.
Nor is this all. It is Criticism that, recognising no position as
final, and refusing to bind itself by the shallow shibboleths of
any sect or school, creates that serene philosophic temper which
loves truth for its own sake, and loves it not the less because it
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