I’ll take the other side on this. OP said “surest” which you seem to interpret as “certain.” Of course not _all_ beautiful artifacts persist - no one takes tha

I’ll take the other side on this. OP said “surest” which you seem to interpret as “certain.” Of course not _all_ beautiful artifacts persist - no one takes that position. But it is reasonable to say that most artifacts which receive attention today are just the artifacts which were formed with special care and whose beauty was preserved, probably by accident, for us.