A sharp way of raising some of the problems of aesthetic theory is to ask why fakes and forgeries, however good, are typically valued much less highly than originals. The difference may seem to be a snobbish and insignificant by-product of the art market, or on the other hand a manifestation of the belief that a work done by a superior artist will, somewhere, have a significance greater than that of an inferior one, however similar it may currently seem to our eyes. In many artistic traditions the novice can only turn himself into a master by successful imitation, and it is by these means that the tradition is upheld. There need be no tendency for the works so produced to be any less valuable than the originals that served as their pattern.