"This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more notable because it is a fulfilment of the law that the corruption of the best is the worst. … And this is the ultimate lesson which the leader of English intellect meant for us … in the tale of the "Merchant of Venice"; in which the true and incorrupt merchant,—kind and free, beyond every other Shakespearian conception of men,—is opposed to the corrupted merchant, or usurer; the lesson being deepened by the expression of the strange hatred which the corrupted merchant bears to the pure one, mixed with intense scorn."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860), sec. 3
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Merchant_of_Venice
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The Merchant of Venice
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