ations and discussions that have tempered and burnished the
theories advanced in my first chapter have been carried on for the most
part with Mr. Roger Fry, to whom, therefore, I owe a debt that defies
exact computation. In the first place, I can thank him, as joint-editor
of _The Burlington Magazine_, for permission to reprint some part of an
essay contributed by me to that periodical. That obligation discharged,
I come to a more complicated reckoning. The first time I met Mr. Fry, in
a railway carriage plying between Cambridge and London, we fell into
talk about contemporary art and its relation to all other art; it seems
to me sometimes that we have been talking about the same thing ever
since, but my friends assure me that it is not quite so bad as that. Mr.
Fry, I remember, had recently become familiar with the modern French
masters--Cezanne, Gauguin, Matisse: I enjoyed the advantage of a longer
acquaintance. Already, however, Mr. Fry had published his _Essay in
Aesthetics_, which, to my thinking, was the most helpful contribution to
the science that had been made since the days of Kant. We talked a good
deal about that essay, and then we discussed the possibility of a
"Post-Impressionist" Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries. We did not
call it "Post-Impressionist"; the word was invented later by Mr. Fry,
which makes me think it a little hard that the more advanced critics
should so often upbraid him for not knowing what "Post-Impressionism"
means.

For some years Mr. Fry and I have been arguing, more or less amicably,
about the principles of aesthetics. We still disagree profoundly. I like
to think that I have not moved an inch from my original position, but I
must confess that the cautious doubts and reservations that have
insinuated themselves into this Preface are all indirect consequences of
my friend's criticism. And it is not only of general ideas and
fundamental things that we have talked; Mr. Fry and I have wrangled for
hours about particular works of art. In such cases the extent to which
one may have affected the judgment of the other cannot possibly be
appraised, nor need it be: neither of us, I think, covets the doubtful
honours of proselytism. Surely whoever appreciates a fine work of art
may be allowed the exquisite pleasure of supposing that he has made a
discovery? Nevertheless, since all artistic theories are based on
aesthetic judgments, it is clear that should one affect the judgments of
another