At the beginning of my book I was at some pains to explain why I held that all systems of aesthetics must be based on personal experience. I said that my purpose was to discover some quality common and peculiar to all works that moved me aesthetically, and I invited those whose experience did not tally with mine--and whose experience does tally exactly with that of any one else?--to discover some other quality common and peculiar to all the objects that so moved them. I said that in elaborating a theory of aesthetics an author must depend entirely on his own experience, and in my book I depended entirely on mine. There are people to whom a simple statement of this sort comes as a pressing invitation to score cheaply:--So now we know what art is, it is whatever you are pleased to honour with your approval. "But why should Mr. Bell suppose that the forms that move him are the only ones proper to move others?" says Mr. Davies. "Again, it is as foolish for Mr. Bell, or any other individual, to say, as he does say, that Frith's _Paddington Station_ is not a work of art as it would be for me to say that rhubarb tart--which I detest--is not food. If I were the only person in the world who ate anything, then, I admit, I should be right in saying that it was not food--for it would not be, because I should never eat it. And if Mr. Bell were the only spectator of works of art on earth, he would have a perfect right to say that _Paddington Station_ was not a work of art. But as he is not the only person on earth--if he will forgive me for mentioning the fact--he has no right to say that it is not a work of art." If this were anything more respectable than one of those pieces of grave but delicate sarcasm for which I am told Mr. Davies is famous, it would be perilous doctrine in the mouth of a professional art critic. We have no right to say that something is not a work of art so long as other people say that it is. The poor fellow who has gone through with a picture to the very end and has got it hung will always, I suspect, consider it a work of art; and I hope that some of his friends will have the humanity to back him up. Therefore ... well, we must be catholic. But Mr. Randall Davies, who deals out, week after week, column after column of aesthetic judgments, may surely be invited by his readers to disclose the criteria by which he distinguishes between works of art and rubbish. If a work of art be that which any one judges to be a work of art, we may as well consult the first policeman we meet instead of going for an opinion to a paid expert.