On Beauty and Being Just

Taken from the first page of Elaine Scarry's "On Beauty and Being Just":

What is the felt experience of cognition at the moment one stands in the presence of a beautiful boy or flower or bird? It seems to incite, even to require, the act of replication. Wittengenstein says that when the eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it.

Beauty brings copies of itself into being. It makes us draw it, take photographs of it, or describe it to other people. Sometimes it gives rise to exact replications and other times to resemblances and still other times to things whose connection to the original site of inspiration is unrecognizable.