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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: better views those whom he believed to be in error, or arousing, with
the white heat of a prophet's zeal, those whom he knew to be unawakened.
There is indeed a good deal of the prophet about John Ruskin. Though
essentially an interpreter with a singularly fine appreciation of beauty,
no man of the nineteenth century felt more keenly that he had a mission,
and none was more loyal to what he believed that mission to be.
While still in college, what seemed a chance incident gave
occasion and direction to this mission. A certain English reviewer
had ridiculed the work of the artist Turner. Now Ruskin held
Turner to be the greatest landscape painter the world had seen,
and he immediately wrote a notable article in his defense. Slowly
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