Disraeli A Study In Personality And Ideas Primary Source Edition

Author : Walter Sydney Sichel
Publisher : anboco
ISBN 13 : 3736419015
Total Pages : 431 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (364 download)

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Download or read book Disraeli - A Study in Personality and Ideas written by Walter Sydney Sichel and published by anboco. This book was released on 2017-06-23 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of imagination is essential to supreme statesmanship. Indeed, no really originative genius in any domain of the mind can succeed without it. In literature it reigns paramount. Of art it is the soul. Without it the historian is a mere registrar of sequence, and no interpreter of characters. In science it decides the end towards which the daring of a Verulam, a Newton, a Herschel, a Darwin, can travel. On the battle-field, in both elements, it enabled Marlborough, Nelson, and Napoleon to revolutionise tactics. In the law its influence is perhaps less evident; but even here a masterful insight into the spirit of precedent marks the creative judge. By lasting imagination, far more than by the colder weapon of shifting reason, the world is governed. "Even Mormon," wrote Disraeli, "counts more votaries than Bentham." For imagination is a vivid, intellectual, half-spiritual sympathy, which diverts the flood of human passion into fresh channels to fertilise the soil; just as fancy again is the play of intellectual emotion. Whereas reason, the measure of which varies from age to age, can only at best dam or curb the deluge for a time. Reason educates and criticises, but Imagination inspires and creates. The magnetic force which is felt is really the spell of personal influence and the key of public opinion. It solves problems by visualising them, and kindles enthusiasm from its own fascinating fires. And more: Imagination is in the truest2 sense prophetic. Could one only grasp with a perfect view the myriad provinces of suffering, enterprise, and aspiration with which the Leader is called upon to grapple, not only would the expedients to meet them suggest themselves as by a divine flash, but their inevitable relations and meanings would start into vision. For what the herd call the Present, is only the literal fact, the shell, of environment. Its spirit is the Future; and the highest imagination in seeing it foresees.