. . . Most theorists of beauty from Kant through the twentieth century would heartily agree: to think that our response to work of art should depend on its market value is today regarded as gross vulgarity. However, if we are looking back not only through history but als0o to the prehistory of art and decoration, we might come closer to an understanding of uncomfortable facts that are bound to irritate this modern aesthetic sensibility. The very idea that costliness and art are intrinsically connected to our aesthetic psychology may be disagreeable possibility, but if it turns out to be true, it is a fact that a better faced than buried.