What, then, is the aura? A strange tissue of space and time; the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be. To follow with the eye—while resting on a summer afternoon—a mountain range on the horizon or a branch that casts its shadow on the beholder is to breathe the aura of those mountains, of that branch. In the light of this description, we can readily grasp the social basis of the aura’s present decay. It rests on two circumstances, both linked to the increasing emergence of the masses and the growing intensity of their movements. Namely: the desire of the present-day masses to “get closer” to things, and their equally passionate concern for overcoming each thing’s uniqueness by assimilating it as a reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at close range in an image, or better in a facsimile, a reproduction. And the reproduction, as offered by illustrated magazines and newsreels, differs unmistakably from the image. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely entwined in the latter as are transitoriness and repeatability in the former. the stripping of the veil from the object, the destruction of the aura, is the signature of a perception whose “sense for the sameness in the world” has so increased that, by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even from what is unique. Thus is manifested in the the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing significance of statistic. The alignment of reality with the masses and of the masses with reality is a process of immeasurable importance for both thinking and perception.