Philosophical thinking on aesthetics ought to be the outcome of first-hand knowledge of the arts. In most of the arts, the primary symbols are those presented to sense-perception-sounding words in poetry, coloured pigments in painting, notes, sequences, rhythms in music. Musical listening is charged with images, explicit or implicit, and the attention even to musical structure is conditioned by our ability to grasp, and at times conceive, and define, ideas or concepts like melody, counterpoint, repetition, inversion, tonality. When we use sentences like, the word A means B, or the word A symbolizes B, it is this kind of symbolization which we assume to be meant, unless told otherwise. Poems, pictures, and ballets involve symbolization in the sense of operating logically through general ideas. Aesthetic theory, like all good philosophy, should be based upon first-hand experience of its subject-matter. Philosophical thinking on aesthetics ought to be the outcome of first-hand knowledge of the arts.