“GREAT MINDS MUST TRUST TO GREAT TRUTHS AND GREAT TALENTS FOR THEIR RISE, AND NOTHING ELSE.” “TRUE WISDOM LIES IN THE POLICY THAT WOULD EFFECT ITS AIMS BY THE INFLUENCE OF OPINION, AND YET BY THE MEANS OF EXISTING FORMS.” “... THE PAST IS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF OUR POWER.”--_Speech on Mr. Cobden’s death, April 3, 1865._ DISRAELI INTRODUCTION ON THE IMAGINATIVE QUALITY 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 truest 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. Imagination, once more, is the mainspring of spontaneity. Its vigour enables the will to beget circumstance, instead of being the creature of surroundings; “for Imagination ever precedeth voluntary motion,” says Bacon. It empowers the will of one to sway and mould the wills of many. And it is the very source of that capacity for idealism which alone distinguishes man from the brute. Viewing in 1870 the general purport of his message, Disraeli wrote with truth that it “... ran counter to the views which had long been prevalent in England, and which may be popularly, though not altogether accurately, described