B451 <=> B453 [BTG XXX Art, p. 452]

“For an all-round enlightenment of the question about the famous contemporary terrestrial art, and for your clear understanding of how it all came about, you must first know about two facts that occurred in that same city Babylon during our fifth flight in person on to the surface of that planet of yours.

“The first is, how and why I then came to be a witness of the events which were the basis of the reasons for the existence among the contemporary three-brained beings of the planet Earth of that now definitely maleficent notion called art; and the second is which were the antecedent events that in their turn then served as the origin of the arisings of these reasons.

“Concerning the first, I must say that during our stay then in the city of Babylon, after the events I have already related which occurred among always the same learned terrestrial three-brained beings assembled there from almost the whole planet, that is to say, after they had split into several independent groups and were, as I have already told you, already absorbed in a question of what is called ‘politics,’ and as I intended at that time to leave Babylon and to continue my observations among the beings of the then already powerful community called Hellas, I decided without delay to learn their speech. From then on I chose to visit those places in the city of Babylon and meet those beings there, which would be of most use in my practical study of their speech.

“Once when I was walking in a certain street of the city of Babylon not far from our house, I saw on a large building which I had already many times passed, what is called an ‘Ookazemotra,’ or, as it is now called, on the Earth, a ‘signboard’ which had been just put up and which announced that a club for foreign learned beings, the ‘Adherents-of-Legominism,’ had been newly opened in that building. Over the door hung a notice to the effect that the enrollment of members of the club was still going on, and that all reports and scientific discussions would be conducted only in the local and Hellenic languages.