Ruskin's interest in beauty and in its possession led him to five central conclusions. First, beauty was the result of a number of complex factors that affected the mind both psychologically and visually. Second, humans had an innate tendency to respond to beauty and to desire to possess it. Third, there were many lower expressions of this desire for possession {including, as we have seen, buying souvenirs and carpets, carving one's name on a pillar and taking photographs}. Fourth, there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors {psychological and visual} responsible for it. And last, the most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so."
( Alain de Botton )
[ The Art of Travel ]
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