ordinarily sensible and sincere critiques, Whistler
really regarded Whistler as his greatest work of art. The white lock,
the single eyeglass, the remarkable hat--these were much dearer to him
than any nocturnes or arrangements that he ever threw off. He could
throw off the nocturnes; for some mysterious reason he could not throw
off the hat. He never threw off from himself that disproportionate
accumulation of aestheticism which is the burden of the amateur.

It need hardly be said that this is the real explanation of the thing
which has puzzled so many dilettante critics, the problem of the
extreme ordinariness of the behaviour of so many great geniuses in
history. Their behaviour was so ordinary that it was not recorded;
hence it was so ordinary that it seemed mysterious. Hence people say
that Bacon wrote Shakespeare. The modern artistic temperament cannot
understand how a man who could write such lyrics as Shakespeare wrote,
could be as keen as Shakespeare was on business transactions in a
little town in Warwickshire. The explanation is simple enough; it is
that Shakespeare had a real lyrical impulse, wrote a real lyric, and so
got rid of the impulse and went about his business. Being an artist did
not prevent him from being an ordinary man, any more than being a
sleeper at night or being a diner at dinner prevented him from being an
ordinary man.

All very great teachers and leaders have had this habit of assuming
their point of view to be one which was human and casual, one which
would readily appeal to every passing man. If a man is genuinely
superior to his fellows the first thing that he believes in is the
equality of man. We can see this, for instance, in that strange and
innocent rationality with which Christ addressed any motley crowd that
happened to stand about Him. "What man of you having a hundred sheep,
and losing one, would not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness,
and go after that which was lost?" Or, again, "What man of you if his
son ask for bread will he give him a stone, or if he ask for a fish
will he give him a serpent?" This plainness, this almost prosaic
camaraderie, is the note of all very great minds.

To very great minds the things on which men agree are so immeasurably
more important than the things on which they differ, that the latter,
for all practical purposes, disappear. They have too much in them of
an ancient laughter even to endure to discuss the difference between