From John Morley: Critic, Journalist, and Statesman

Abstract

John Morley’s political genesis is quite different [from Lord Randolph Churchill or Joseph Chamberlain]. From the meditations of the study, he went into journalism, and from there, to the responsibilities of power, not as a disillusioned or cynical individual turning his back on the philosophical ideal of his youth, but instead as a practical logician who does not believe he has fully explored the depth of his ideas until he has put them into practice, and for whom action is the second stage of life, after thought. Until then, there was many an example of thinkers who had pitifully failed in Parliament. Mr. Morley’s success in these two fields is significant: he shakes up the old notion according to which there are two kinds of intelligence that ignore and scorn each other: the creators of ideas and the leaders of men.