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The Ethics of the Dust by John Ruskin
page 5 of 207 (02%)
worth reprinting, in the way I have also reprinted "Unto this
Last,"--page for page; that the students of my more advanced works
may be able to refer to these as the original documents of them;
of which the most essential in this book are these following.

I. The explanation of the baseness of the avaricious functions of
the Lower Pthah, p. 54, with his beetle-gospel, p. 59, "that a
nation can stand on its vices better than on its virtues,"
explains the main motive of all my books on Political Economy.

II. The examination of the connection between stupidity and crime,
pp. 87-96, anticipated all that I have had to urge in Fors
Clavigera against the commonly alleged excuse for public
wickedness,--"They don't mean it--they don't know any better."

III. The examination of the roots of Moral Power, pp. 145-149, is
a summary of what is afterwards developed with utmost care in my
inaugural lecture at Oxford on the relation of Art to Morals;
compare in that lecture, sections 83-85, with the sentence in p.
147 of this book, "Nothing is ever done so as really to please our
Father, unless we would also have done it, though we had had no
Father to know of it."

This sentence, however, it must be observed, regards only the
general conditions of action in the children of God, in
consequence of which it is foretold of them by Christ that they
will say at the Judgment, "When saw we thee?" It does not refer to
the distinct cases in which virtue consists in faith given to
command, appearing to foolish human judgment inconsistent with the
Moral Law, as in the sacrifice of Isaac; nor to those in which any
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