That is just the difference between Rembrandt and Professor Lautner.
Lautner has one flat, dead-level, unprofitable soul that neither
soars high nor dives deep; and his mind reasons unobjectionable
things out syllogistically, in a manner perfectly inconsequential.
He is icily regular, splendidly null.
Every man measures others by himself--he has only one standard. When
a man ridicules certain traits in other men, he ridicules himself.
How would he know that other men were contemptible, did he not look
into his own heart and there see the hateful things? Thackeray wrote
his book on Snobs, because he was a Snob--which is not to say that
he was a Snob all the time. When you recognize a thing, good or bad,
in the outside world, it is because it was yours already.
"I carry the world in my heart," said the Prophet of old. All the
universe you have is the universe you have within.
Old Walt Whitman, when he saw the wounded soldier, exclaimed, "I am
that man!" And two thousand years before this, Terence said, "I am a
man, and nothing that is human is alien to me."
I know just why Professor Lautner believes that Rembrandt never
could have painted a picture with a deep, tender, subtle and
spiritual significance. Professor Lautner averages fairly well, he
labors hard to be consistent, but his thought gamut runs just from
Bottom the weaver to Dogberry the judge. He is a cauliflower--that
is to say, a cabbage with a college education.
Yes, I understand him, because for most of the time I myself am
supremely dull, childishly dogmatic, beautifully self-complacent.