Art
“This new movement in painting there, among the be- ings who were also striving to learn the truth at least in something, made what is called a ‘great stir’; and it was even the basis for the arising of another and still more peculiar ‘movement,’ this time among what are called the Babylonian ‘Nooxhomists,’ among just those beings of that time who studied and produced what are called new ‘combinations-of-concentrations-of-vibrations’ which act in a definite way on the sense of smell of the beings and which produce definite effects in their general psyche, that is to say, among those beings there who made it their aim to find the truth by means of smells.
“Certain beings who were then enthused by this found- ed, in imitation of the followers of the said branch of painters, a similar society and the motto of their new movement was: ‘To-search-the-truth-in-the-shades-of- smells-obtained-between-the-moment-of-the-action- of-cold-at-freezing-and-the-moment-of-the-action-of- warmth-at-decomposition.’
“Like the painters, they also then found between these said two definite smells about seven hundred very definite shades, which they employed in their elucidating experiments.
“I do not know to what these two peculiar ‘movements’ then in Babylon would have led and where they would have ceased, if a newly appointed chief of the city, during the time we were there, had not begun prosecuting the followers of that second new ‘movement’ because with their already sufficiently keen sense of smell they had be- gun to notice and unwittingly to expose certain of his what are called ‘shady dealings,’ with the result that he used every possible means to suppress everything connected not only with that second new movement, but with the first as well.
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