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

out suspecting the 'well of wisdom' concealed in these works—which werenot 'originals' but only partially decayed copies made by their recentancestors, who were not yet complete 'plagiarists'—and without taking theappropriate practical measures to safeguard them, simply stuffed them intowhat are called 'museums ' And there, little by little these works have beeneither totally destroyed or partially mutilated by frequent copyings withvarious corrosive and oxidizing compositions such as 'alabaster,' 'fish glue,'and so on, only in order that the copyists might swagger before their friendsor fool their teachers, or achieve some other hasnamussian aim."It must in fairness be admitted that now and again certain beings ofcontemporary civilization have suspected that something was concealed in theworks that chanced to reach them in their original form, specially created inBabylon by the members of the club of the Adherents of Legomonism, oreven in the copies of these originals made in the course of their transmissionfrom generation to generation by various conscientious professionals, towhom, as I have already said, it had not yet become proper to 'plagiarize,' andwho therefore did not resort to altering the details of the works of others inorder to pass them off as their own And it sometimes happened that certain ofthese inquiring beings of the European civilization, while searching veryattentively, actually found in these works some fragment or other of this'something' that had been intentionally hidden in them."For instance, at the beginning of the contemporary European civilization,a certain monk named Ignatius, who had formerly been an architect, attainedthe possibility of deciphering the knowledge and useful information hidden inthe productions of almost all the branches of what was then called 'ancientart,' which had come down from the Babylonian epoch.