critic may be able to make me see in a picture that had left me cold
things that I had overlooked, till at last, receiving the aesthetic
emotion, I recognise it as a work of art. To be continually pointing out
those parts, the sum, or rather the combination, of which unite to
produce significant form, is the function of criticism. But it is
useless for a critic to tell me that something is a work of art; he must
make me feel it for myself. This he can do only by making me see; he
must get at my emotions through my eyes. Unless he can make me see
something that moves me, he cannot force my emotions. I have no right to
consider anything a work of art to which I cannot react emotionally; and
I have no right to look for the essential quality in anything that I
have not _felt_ to be a work of art. The critic can affect my aesthetic
theories only by affecting my aesthetic experience. All systems of
aesthetics must be based on personal experience--that is to say, they
must be subjective.

Yet, though all aesthetic theories must be based on aesthetic judgments,
and ultimately all aesthetic judgments must be matters of personal
taste, it would be rash to assert that no theory of aesthetics can have
general validity. For, though A, B, C, D are the works that move me, and
A, D, E, F the works that move you, it may well be that _x_ is the only
quality believed by either of us to be common to all the works in his
list. We may all agree about aesthetics, and yet differ about particular
works of art. We may differ as to the presence or absence of the quality
_x_. My immediate object will be to show that significant form is the
only quality common and peculiar to all the works of visual art that
move me; and I will ask those whose aesthetic experience does not tally
with mine to see whether this quality is not also, in their judgment,
common to all works that move them, and whether they can discover any
other quality of which the same can be said.