Art

“It usually then further happens there that if the sick being has an uncle who is a member of one or other of their ‘parliaments,’ or if he himself gets acquainted with the widow of a ‘former-business-man,’ or if the period of his preparation for becoming a responsible being has for some reason or other been spent in such an environment or under such conditions that he has automatically acquired the property called ‘slipping-in-without-soap,’ then what is called the ‘producer,’ or, as he is also called, the ‘owner-of-lambs,’ takes this work of his and orders the mentioned contemporary actors to ‘reproduce’ it exactly as it was wiseacred by this being who has fallen ill with this strange illness of dramatizacring.

“And these contemporary actors there first reproduce this work themselves alone, without strangers, and they reproduce it until it is exactly as the sick being himself has indicated and as the producer has ordered, and when finally their reproduction proceeds without the participation of their own consciousness and feelings and these contemporary actors themselves are completely transformed into what are called ‘living automatons,’ then and then only, with the help of those among them who have not yet become entirely living automatons—for which reason they later acquire the name of ‘stage managers’— they do the same thing under their direction, but already now in the presence of other ordinary beings assembled in these contemporary theaters.

“Thus you can now, from all I have just said, easily conclude that, besides many definitely maleficent consequences which I shall soon touch upon more in detail, these theaters cannot of course provide anything for that lofty aim which the Babylonian learned beings then had in view when they created for the first time such a form of conscious reproduction of perceptions and of the associative reactions to them of other beings similar to themselves.

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