Beauty is like a Tree

Beauty is like a tree. It has many branches but one central trunk—there are many cultural variations of taste, tradition, and idiom, but one vital human appetite for beauty and one culturally universal collection of human aesthetic aptitudes. Likewise, there are many art forms—painting, sculpture, music, poetry, storytelling, dramatic mimesis, dance, architecture, and so on—but one mysterious quality of transforming loveliness, of affecting presence, that they all share.

Our origins in the natural world

Beauty is something deeply rooted in the soil of our origins in the natural world, something which if cut off from its roots will die—but also something which continues to grow and put out new flowers, fruits and seeds every season. The new forms it takes, according to the cultures that cultivate it and according to the historical and technological environment of each new period, draw their sap and life from the ancient sources they tap, and are tested by time according to how well they serve the life of the whole tree.

Truth in Beauty Everywhere people are demanding a return to beauty as a basic value of culture. This renewed interest in beauty may be one of the central motifs of our new century. More