Aesthetics and ethics grow on trees

“Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment – originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit.”
(Charles Darwin, Descent of Man)

“On the whole, every new aesthetic reality makes man’s ethical reality more precise. For aesthetics is the mother of ethics; The categories of “good” and “bad” are, first and foremost, aesthetic ones…”
(Joseph Brodsky, Nobel lecture)

Out of respect for life and beauty individuality of culture grows. Like old trees, it takes thousands of years to develop, but minutes to destroy…