tation_ 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.

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 aesthetic 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 aesthetic judgments, I
insisted on the fact that we might all disagree about particular works
of art and yet agree about aesthetics. 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 ca