The sense of beauty puts a brake upon destruction, by
representing its object as irreplaceable. When the world looks back at me with
my eyes, as it does in aesthetic experience, it is also addressing me in
another way. Something is being revealed to me, and I am being made to stand
still and absorb it. It is of course nonsense to suggest that there are naiads
in the trees and dryads in the groves. What is revealed to me in the experience
of beauty is a fundamental truth about being - the truth that being is a gift,
and receiving it is a task. This is a truth of theology that demands exposition
as such.
Roger Scruton
A section of Scruton's talk, "The View from Nowhere," which was part of the Gifford Lectures' The Face of God ...
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