B322 <=> B324 [BTG XXIV Beelzebub’s fifth flight, p. 323]

“But from the time of what is called the Tikliamish–civilization until now, those beings, especially the contemporary ones, chiefly became learned who ‘learned-by-rote’ as much as possible about every kind of vacuous information, such as old women love to relate about what was presumably said in olden times.

“Note, by the way, that for the definition of the importance of the learned there, our venerated Mullah Nassr Eddin also has a sentence expressed in the following words:

“’Everybody talks as if our learned know that half a hundred is fifty.’

“There on your planet, the more of such information one of your favorites mechanically learns by rote, information he himself has never verified, and which moreover, he has never sensed, the more learned he is considered to be.

“And so, my boy, we reached the city of Babylon; there were indeed a great many learned beings there gathered from almost the whole of that planet of yours.

“As the causes of the gathering of these beings in the city of Babylon at that time are extremely interesting, I will tell you also about this a little more in detail.

“The point is, that most of the learned beings of the Earth had been then assembled there under compulsion by a most peculiar Persian king, under whose dominion at that period was also the city of Babylon.

“In order to understand thoroughly which fundamental aspect ensuing from the total results of the abnormally established conditions of ordinary being-existence there, gave rise to the said peculiarity of this Persian king, I must first enlighten you in respect of two facts which had become fixed long before.

“The first fact is that almost from the time of the loss of the continent Atlantis, there gradually began to be crystallized, and during later centuries became completely crystallized in the presence of every one of your favorites there, a particular ‘inherency’ thanks to which that being-sensation which is called ‘happiness-for-one’s-being’ – which is experienced from time to time by every three-brained being from the satisfaction of his inner self-evaluation – appears in the presences of your favorites exclusively only when they acquire for their own possession a great deal of that popular metal there called ‘gold.’