half-humorously, how he fought and struggled with his nurses, and
made fun of the matter. That was a very courageous thing to do,
because most people are ashamed of insanity, no doubt from the old
sad ignorant tradition that it was the work of demoniacal agencies,
and not a mere disease like other diseases. Half the tragedy of
insanity is that it shocks people, and cannot be alluded to or
spoken about; but one can take the sting out of almost any calamity
if one can make fun of it, and this Ruskin did.

But he was wounded by his fears, as we most of us are, not only
through his vanity but through his finest emotions. He felt his
impotence and his failure. He had thought of his gift of language
as one might think of a magic wand which one can wave, and thus
compel duller spirits to do one's bidding. Ruskin began by thinking
that there was not much amiss with the world except a sort of
pathetic stupidity; and he thought that if only people could be
told, clearly and loudly enough, what was right, they would do it
gladly; and then it dawned upon him by slow degrees that the
confusion was far deeper than that, that men mostly did not live in
motives but in appetites. And so he fell into a sort of noble rage
with the imperfection of mortal things; and one of the clearest
signs, as he himself knew, that he was drifting into one of the
mind-storms which swept across him, was that in these moods
everything that people said or wrote had power to arouse his
irritation, to interrupt his work, to break his sleep, and to show
him that he was powerless indeed. What he feared was derision, and
the good-natured indifferent stolidity that is worse than any
derision, and the knowledge that, with all his powers and
perceptions, his common-sense, which was great, and his sense of
responsibility, he was treated by the world like a spoilt child,