the ruins

“What has led the building upward is human will; what gives it its present
appearance is the brute, downward-dragging, corroding, crumbling power of nature. Still, so
long as we can speak of a ruin at all and not of a mere heap of stones, this power does not sink the work of man into the formlessness of mere matter. There rises a new form which, from
the standpoint of nature, is entirely meaningful, comprehensible, differentiated. Nature has
transformed the work of art into material for her own expression, as she had previously
served as material for art.”

Georg Simmel, 1911