Beauty & Love
Roger Scruton has this illustration about beauty which I think I may have a version of for a few years. Scruton says that a woman tells you she's wants that peach from the peach bowl. So you hand her a random peach, and she refuses it. No, she tells you. If her desire was to eat it then sure, any peach would have sufficed. But she does not desire the peach to eat, but for its beauty. She does not wish to observe it and when she gets all the relevant data she tosses it to the side as any other peach. She just wants it. That is the only peach that will satisfy. To not recognize that is not grasp the power and effects of beauty. I think I was taught the same lesson many years ago. I was in a car with a mentor of mine. I was still in high school, and dating this girl. My mentor, he tells me, "Adrian, if you don't think you have the most beautiful girl in the world, it's not going to work out." I thought he was being impossible. Of course I could never thin...