of view among the fashionable, so much
pharisaism among the respectable, so much vulgarity among the rich,
mixed with so much real earnestness, benevolence, and good sense;
nowhere, therefore, so much to seem merely ridiculous to one who
looked at it from without, wanting the sympathy which comes from the
love of mankind, or even from the love of one's country. It was
natural for a young man with Disraeli's gifts to mock at what he
saw. But he would not sit still in mere contempt. The thirst for
power and fame gave him no rest. He must gain what he saw every one
around him struggling for. He must triumph over these people whose
follies amused him; and the sense that he perceived and could use
their follies would add zest to his triumph. He might have been a
great satirist; he resolved to become a great statesman. For such a
career, his Hebrew detachment gave him some eminent advantages. It
enabled him to take a cooler and more scientific view of the social
and political phenomena he had to deal with. He was not led astray
by party cries. He did not share vulgar prejudices. He calculated
the forces at work as an engineer calculates the strength of his
materials, the strain they have to bear from the wind, and the weights
they must support. And what he had to plan was not the success of a
cause, which might depend on a thousand things out of his ken, but his
own success, a simpler matter.

A still greater source of strength lay in his Hebrew intensity. It
would have pleased him, so full of pride in the pure blood of his
race,[5] to attribute to that purity the singular power of concentration
which the Jews undoubtedly possess. They have the faculty of throwing
the whole stress of their natures into the pursuit of one object,
fixing their eyes on it alone, sacrificing to it other desires,
clinging to it even when it seems unattainable. Disraeli was only
twenty-eight when he made his first attempt to enter the House of
Commons. Four repulses did not discourage him, though his means were
but scanty to support such contests; and the fifth time he
succeeded. When his first speech in Parliament had been received with
laughter, and politicians were congratulating themselves that this
adventurer had found his level, he calmly told them that he had
always ended by succeeding in whatever he attempted, and that he
would succeed in this too. He received no help from his own side, who
regarded him with suspicion, but forced himself i