B775 <=> B777 [BTG XXXIX The holy planet “Purgatory,” p. 776]

“Although this expression corresponding to the truth exists there among them, yet concerning the consideration of its exact sense, as in general concerning every short verbal formulation, they at best always express with their strange shortsighted mentation – even if they should wish with their whole common presence actively and sincerely to reveal their inner representation and essential understanding of this expression of theirs – something as follows:

“’Good . . . if we are “images of God” . . . that means . . . means . . . “God” is like us and has an appearance also like us . . . and that means, our “God” has the same moustache, beard, nose, as we have, and he dresses also as we do. He dresses as we do, doubtless because like us he is also very fond of modesty; it was not for nothing that he expelled Adam and Eve from Paradise, only because they lost their modesty and began to cover themselves with clothes.’

“In certain of the beings there, particularly of recent times, their being-Aimnophnian-mentation or perceptible logic has already become such that they can very clearly see this same ‘God’ of theirs in their picturings, almost with a comb sticking out of his left vest pocket, with which he sometimes combs his famous beard.

“Such a superpeculiar being-Aimnophnian-mentation about their ‘God’ proceeded in your favorites chiefly from the Hasnamussian manifestations of those ‘learned’ beings who, you remember, I have already told you, assembled in the city of Babylon and collectively began to invent various maleficent fictions concerning their ‘God,’ which were afterwards by chance widely spread everywhere on that ill-fated planet. And in view of the fact that that period coincided with the time when the three-brained beings there began to exist particularly ‘Selzelnualno,’ i.e., particularly ‘passively,’ in the sense of the being-efforts proper to three-centered beings, therefore these maleficent inventions were thoroughly absorbed and appropriated by the beings.