What, in fact, Mr. Bell does is to drive from an aesthetic position which is in all essential that of Plato a criterion or standard of artistic value of which art criticism stands badly in need. Mr. Bell's. view is developed more particularly in regard to the visual arts, but with the requisite changes in point of detail it could be made equally applicable to music. " The starting point for all systems of aesthetic experience," Mr. clie tells us, "must be the personal experience of a peculiar emotion. The objects that provoke this emotion we call works of art.