uality of his thinking was a source both of
strength and of weakness--of weakness, because he could not prove his
propositions; of strength, because, stated as he stated them, it was
not less hard to disprove them. That mark of a superior mind, that it
must have a theory, was never wanting. Some one said of him that he
was "the ruins of a thinker." He could not rest content, like many
among his followers, with a prejudice, a dogma delivered by tradition,
a stolid suspicion unamenable to argument. He would not acquiesce in
negation. He must have a theory, a positive theory, to show not only
that his antagonist's view was erroneous, but that he had himself a
more excellent way. These theories generally had in them a measure of
truth and value for any one who could analyse them; but as this was
exactly what the rank and file of the party could not do, they got
into sad confusion when they tried to talk his language.

He could hardly be called a well-read man, nor were his intellectual
interests numerous. His education had consisted mainly in promiscuous
reading during boyhood and early youth. There are worse kinds of
education for an active intelligence than to let it have the run of a
large library. The wild browsings of youth, when curiosity is strong
as hunger, stir the mind and give the memory some of the best food it
ever gets. The weak point of such a method is that it does not teach
accuracy nor the art of systematic study. In middle life natural
indolence and his political occupations had kept Disraeli from filling
up the gaps in his knowledge, while, in conversation, what he liked
best was persiflage. He was, however, tolerably familiar with the
ancient classics, and with modern English and French literature;
enjoyed Quintilian and Lucian, preferred Sophocles to Aeschylus and
(apparently) Horace to Virgil, despised Browning, considered Tennyson
the best of contemporary poets, but "not a poet of a high order."[8]
Physical science seems never to have attracted him. Political economy
he hated and mocked at almost as heartily as did Carlyle. People have
measured his knowledge of history and geography by observing that he
placed the Crucifixion in the lifetime of Augustus, and thought, down
till 1878, when he had to make a speech about Afghanistan, that the
Andes were the highest mountains in the world. But geography is a
subject which a man of affairs does not think of reading up in later
life: he is content if he can