Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

30 Art

30.488-9

“You must know that those parts of the brains of beings which objective science calls ‘Hlodistomaticules,’ and certain of which on your planet the terrestrial ‘learned physicians’ call ‘nerve-brain-ganglia,’ are formed of what are called ‘Nirioonossian-crystallized-vibrations,’ which in general arise in the completed formation of every being as a result of the process of all kinds of perceptions of their organ of hearing; and later on, these Hlodistomaticules, functioning from the reaction upon them of similar but not yet crystallized vibrations, evoke in the corresponding region which is subject to the given brain, the said Vibroechonitanko or, as it is sometimes called, ‘remorse.’

30.489

“In accordance with the foresight of Great Nature these said Hlodistomaticules serve in the presences of beings as real factors for assisting the arising of the processes of association at those moments, when either the promptings arisen within are absent or the shocks coming from without do not reach their brains.

30.489

“When these vibrations, arisen from the said sources, enter the presences of the beings they touch the Hlodistomaticules of one or another brain, then, according to the general functioning of the whole being, they produce the said process of ‘Vibroechonitanko.’

30.489-90

“The second particularity of the functioning of the perceptive organ of hearing is that in general, by the action of vibrations obtained from the sequence of sounds of every kind of melody, the association is usually evoked in the presences of the beings in one or another of the three brains, just in that brain in which at the given moment what is called ‘the-momentum-of-what-was-experienced’ is increasing more intensively, and the sequence of the impulses evoked for experiencing usually proceeds in an automatic order.

30.490

“The learned musicians and singers then in the city of Babylon combined their melodies in such ways that the sequence of the vibrations of the sounds should evoke in the beings a sequence of associations, and therefore also impulses for experiencings, not in the usual automatic order, that is to say, so that the sequence of vibrations, on entering into the common presence of the beings, should evoke the Vibroechonitanko in the Hlodistomaticules, not of just one brain, as it usually proceeds according to which brain at the given moment the associations predominate, but should evoke it now in one brain, now in another, and now in the third; thus they also provided for the quality or, as they themselves would say, the numbers of the vibrations of the sounds which would affect one or another brain.

30.490

“This latter, namely, from which vibrations, in which brain of the beings, which data are formed and for which new perceptions these data might be what are called ‘determinants-of-new-resultants,’ they were also already quite familiar with.

30.490

“Owing to these sequences of sounds which they combined simultaneously in the presences of beings, different kinds of impulses arose, which evoked various quite opposite sensations, and these sensations in their turn produced unusual experiencings in them and reflex movements not proper to them.

30.490

“And truly, my boy, the sequence of sounds they combined did indeed affect all the beings into whose presence they entered, exceedingly strangely.

30.490

“Even in me, a being cast, as they would say, in another mold, various being-impulses were engendered and were alternated with an unusual sequence.

30.491

“It happened in this way because as the sounds of their melodies which they had combined in a definite sequence entered into my common presence, Djartklom proceeded in them, or as it is otherwise said, the sounds were ‘sorted out’ and acted equally upon all the three variously caused Hlodistomaticules, with the consequence that the associations proceeding in me in the three independent brains—though simultaneously and with an equal intensity of similar associations but differently natured series of impressions—engendered in my presence three quite different promptings.

30.491

“For instance, the localization of my consciousness, or as your favorites would say my ‘thinking-center,’ engendered in my common presence, let us suppose, the impulse of joy; the second localization in me, or my ‘feeling-center,’ engendered the impulse called ‘sorrow’; and the localization of the body itself, or as once again your favorites would call it, my ‘moving-center,’ engendered the impulse of ‘religiousness.’

30.491

“And it was just in these unusual impulses engendered in the beings by their musical and vocal melodies, that they indicated what they wished.