Beelzebubs-Tales-to-His-Grandson-by-G-I-Gurdjieff

"In order that you may represent to yourself more clearly all the factorsconnected with this misunderstanding there, you must know first of all thatbefore the second transapalnian catastrophe, when these favorites of yoursstill prepared themselves for responsible existence normally, as did all threebrainedbeings of our Great Universe, they had at their disposal for their'speech'—that is, for mutual intercourse through appropriate sounds,intentionally uttered— and could pronounce up to 341 different consonancesor 'letters. '"But later on, when thanks as always to the same conditions of ordinarybeing-existence abnormally established by them, every property inherent inthe presence of three-brained beings gradually deteriorated, this 'beingableness'also deteriorated and at such a rate that the beings of the Babylonianperiod could use for their conversation only seventy-seven definite soundsAnd thereafter the deterioration continued so rapidly that five centuries lateryour favorites could pronounce at most only thirty-six different 'letters,' andthe beings of certain communities could not articulate even this small numberof separate sounds."And so, my boy, information concerning the Babylonian period passedfrom one generation to another not only through what is called 'oraltransmission,' but also by means of markings on certain durable materials, thatis, 'inscriptions' consisting of conventional signs or letters, which stood fordifferent 'articulated being-sounds' of that time When, at the beginning of thecontemporary civilization, certain beings began to decipher these inscriptions,'a bit here and a bit there,' and realized that they could not pronounce many ofthese 'letters,' they invented what is called a 'written compromise.'"This 'written compromise' was that, in place of any sign or letter whichthey could not pronounce, even though they sensed the 'flavor' of itspronunciation, they decided to use