I hasten to accept Mr. Randall Davies's offer of friendship,[18] though I doubt whether much good can come of it if we are to go on arguing about Æsthetics. We are too far apart. What Mr. Davies feels for a picture is something altogether different from what he feels for a carpet, whereas the emotion I feel for a carpet is of exactly the same kind as the emotion I feel for a picture, a statue, a cathedral, or a pot. Also, my whole system of Æsthetics is based on this psychological fact, so that it would, perhaps, have been wiser in Mr. Davies to have stated the difference between us and let it go at that.

If some one were to find fault with the New Statesman on account of the flimsiness and inadequacy of the arguments it adduces in favour of private ownership of railways, the editor, being a polite man, would reply, I suppose, that his critic had misunderstood the policy of the paper: he would not feel that his arguments had received any very damaging blow. In my first chapter I made it clear—my publishers accused me of becoming repetitious about it—that what I wanted to discover was a quality common and peculiar to all those objects I called works of art; I explained that by "works of art" I meant objects that provoked in me a peculiar emotion, called Æsthetic; and I repeated over and over again that amongst these objects were pictures, pots, textiles, statues, buildings, etc. Mr. Davies's sharp eyes have enabled him to perceive either that my hypothesis—that "significant form" is the essential quality in a work of art—leads to the inclusion of Persian carpets amongst works of art, or that the hypothesis that representation is the essence of art excludes them: I am not sure which. Anyway, this much is certain, either both pictures and carpets can be works of art or they cannot. I set out from the hypothesis that pictures and carpets, or rather some pictures and some carpets, are works of art; and therefore I am less inclined to feel crushed by Mr. Davies's discovery that my premises follow from my conclusions than to inquire why Mr. Davies does not consider carpets and pots and buildings works of art, or, if, after all, he does consider them works of art, to what class he relegates pictures and statues. My object is to discover some quality common and peculiar to all works of art. Such a quality there must be unless when we use the term "works of art" we gibber. Does Mr. Davies assert that only pictures and statues can be works of art? Or are we to assume that he gibbers?

Even if I cannot argue profitably with my new friend I may be able to give him a useful hint. For though, as he wittily observes, he is still much older than I am, it is conceivable that I enjoy a wider Æsthetic experience.

"To look for the same qualities in a carpet and a picture would be equally absurd, seeing that one is intended to hang on the wall and the other to be laid on the floor. If any one doubts this, let him frame his carpets and put his canvases over the parquet."

To hang on the wall was, of course, precisely the purpose for which many of the finest Oriental carpets were intended; but disdaining all considerations, no matter how relevant, that seem to set a premium on scholarship, I will gladly put my friend and his readers in the way of carrying out this interesting experiment. They need not jeopardize the drawing-room furniture. Not far from the house in which Mr. Davies lives stands a building so large and so silly that it can scarcely have escaped his admiration. It is the Victoria and Albert Museum; and any one who cares to step inside can see a fair collection of Oriental carpets hanging picture-wise against the wall—hanging in frames too. I shall be very much surprised if the more sensitive of those who trouble to pay them a visit do not feel that these carpets are as Æsthetically satisfactory on the wall as they would be on the floor, and I shall be amazed if they do not feel also that they are as definitely works of art as the objects that adorn the walls of the Tate Gallery.

My purpose is to discover the quality common and peculiar to works of art. I have suggested that this quality is what I call Significant Form—i.e. combinations of lines and colours that are in themselves moving. A good many people besides Mr. Davies have blamed me for giving the name Significant Form to just that form which seems to signify nothing. I adopted the term with hesitation, and I shall sacrifice it without pain if something better can be found to take its place. All the same, I did try to explain what I meant by it. I speak of Significant Form in contradistinction to Insignificant Beauty—the beauty of gems or of a butterfly's wing, the beauty that pleases, but does not seem to provoke that peculiar thrill that we call an Æsthetic emotion. I suggested very cautiously that the explanation of this difference might lie in the fact that the forms created by an artist express, or in some way transmit, an emotion felt by their creator, whereas the forms of nature, so far as most of us are concerned, do not seem to hand on anything so definite. But about this part of my theory I was, and still am, extremely diffident, and I mention it here only in the hope of justifying what has seemed to many sensible people a silly name.

At the beginning of my book I was at some pains to explain why I held that all systems of Æsthetics 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 Æsthetically, 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 Æsthetics 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 Æsthetic 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.

If Mr. Davies had understood the very simple language in which I stated my position, he would have realized that when I say that Paddington Station is not a work of art I mean that Paddington Station does not provoke in me an Æsthetic emotion, and that I believe we can have no reason for thinking a thing to be a work of art except that we feel it to be one. Paddington Station did not move me; therefore I had no reason for judging it a work of art, but, of course, I may have looked at the picture stupidly and remained insensitive to the real significance of its forms. If Mr. Davies had understood the very simple language in which I stated my position, he would have realized that, far from making a claim to infallibility in Æsthetic judgments, I insisted on the fact that we might all disagree about particular works of art and yet agree about Æsthetics. But if Mr. Davies had been able to catch the general drift of my book, he would have understood that whether Paddington Station moves me or whether it leaves me cold is a matter of secondary importance. The point of first importance is whether a person who is moved in the same sort of way by Paddington Station and a Sung bowl and Sta. Sophia and a Persian carpet can find any quality common and peculiar to all save that which I have called Significant Form.

That is the problem. It is not quite so simple as I have had to make it appear. Some day I hope to answer the pertinent questions raised by Mr. Roger Fry and other critics. In my book I have examined my own experience in the hope of inducing my readers to examine theirs. What do they say? Are they really talking nonsense when they speak of "works of art," including under that head pictures, pots, buildings, textiles, etc.? If they are not, what characteristic distinguishes the species? Do they not feel as much emotion for a picture of a round of beef as for a picture of the Crucifixion, and do they feel less for a Sassanian textile? If what they had taken for a jug turns out to be a paper-weight; if, as sometimes happens in a battered fresco, what was said to be the Heavenly host is proved to be a pack of licentious Florentines, do they really have to readjust their Æsthetic attitude? If people who are capable of feeling and of analysing their feelings will give me honest answers to these questions, I shall be even more grateful to them than I am to Mr. Davies for his facetious advertisement of my book.