Art

All right, dear Hassein!

“I will not, like His Right Reverence, relate to you in detail about any particular oddity of the psyche of those three-brained beings of our Great Universe who have taken your fancy. No, I will only remind His Right Reverence of one factor, the cause of which arose during our fifth stay on the surface of that planet, and which, when we were there for the sixth and last time, had become the chief cause why, in every one of those favorites of yours, from the very first day of their arising until their formation as responsible beings, their ableness of normal being-mentation is step by step distorted and finally transformed almost into a ‘Kaltusara.’ ”

Thereupon, addressing Beelzebub himself, he, with a timid look and in a hesitant tone, continued to speak:

“Don’t blame me, your Right Reverence, for venturing to express to you the opinion which has just arisen in me, and which is the outcome of my reflections on data already perhaps worn too thin for mind-conclusions.

“While relating to our dear Hassein about all the various reasons that have brought it about that the psyche of the contemporary three-brained beings of the planet Earth who have taken his fancy has become transformed, as you once deigned to express yourself, into a mill for grinding out nonsense, you scarcely even mentioned one factor, perhaps more important than the others, which, during recent centuries, has served as the basis for it.

“I intend to speak about that factor which has already become definitely maleficent for the contemporary beings and at the arising of the cause of which, you yourself were present, as I very well remember during our stay then in Babylon; I mean the factor they themselves call ‘art.’