Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

13.103

“My dear and kind Grandfather, be so kind as to explain to me, if only in a general way, why those beings there are such that they take the ‘ephemeral’ for the Real.”

13.103

To this question of his grandson, Beelzebub replied thus:

13.103

“It was only during later periods that the three-brained beings of the planet Earth began to have this particularity in their psyche, and just this particularity arose in them only because their predominant part, which was formed in them as in all three-brained beings, gradually allowed other parts of their total presences to perceive every new impression without what is called ‘being-Partkdolg-duty’ but just merely as, in general, such impressions are perceived by the separate independent localizations existing under the name of being-centers present in the three-brained beings, or, as I should say in their language, they believe everything anybody says, and not solely that which they themselves have been able to recognize by their own sane deliberation.

13.103-4

“In general, any new understanding is crystallized in the presence of these strange beings only if Smith speaks of somebody or something in a certain way; and then if Brown says the same, the hearer is quite convinced it is just so and couldn’t possibly be otherwise. Thanks merely to this particularity of their psyche and to the fact that the said writer was much spoken about in the said manner, most of the beings there at the present time are quite convinced that he is indeed a very great psychologist and has an incomparable knowledge of the psyche of the beings of his planet.

13.104

“But, as a matter of fact, when I was on that planet for the last time and, having heard of the said writer, once went myself especially to see him, on quite another matter, he was according to my understanding not only like all the other contemporary writers there, that is to say, extremely limited, and as our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin would say: ‘able to see no further than his nose,’ but as regards any knowledge of the real psyche of the beings of his planet in real conditions, he might safely even be called ‘totally illiterate.’

13.104

“I repeat that the story of this writer is a very characteristic example showing the extent to which, in the three-brained beings who have taken your fancy, particularly in the contemporary ones, the realization of ‘being-Partkdolg-duty’ is absent, and how their own subjective being-convictions formed by their own logical deliberations are never, as in general it is proper to three-brained beings, crystallized in them, but only those are crystallized which depend exclusively only upon what others say about the given question.

13.104

“It was only because they failed to realize ‘being-Partkdolg-duty,’ which realization alone enables a being to become aware of genuine reality, that they saw in the said writer some perfection or other which was not there at all.

13.104

“This strange trait of their general psyche, namely, of being satisfied with just what Smith or Brown says, without trying to know more, became rooted in them already long ago, and now they no longer strive at all to know anything cognizable by their own active deliberations alone.

13.104-5

“Concerning all this it must be said that neither the organ Kundabuffer which their ancestors had is to blame, nor its consequences which, owing to a mistake on the part of certain Sacred Individuals, were crystallized in their ancestors and later began to pass by heredity from generation to generation.

13.105

“But they themselves were personally to blame for it, and just on account of the abnormal conditions of external ordinary being-existence which they themselves have gradually established and which have gradually formed in their common presence just what has now become their inner ‘Evil-God,’ called ‘Self-Calming.’

13.105

“But all this you yourself, later on, will well understand, when I shall have given you, as I have already promised, more information about that planet which has taken your fancy.

13.105

“In any case, I strongly advise you to be very careful in the future in your references to the three-brained beings of that planet, not to offend them in any way; otherwise—as they also say there, ‘With what may the Devil not joke?’—they might find out about your insulting them and, to use another of their expressions, ‘lay you by the heels.’

13.105

“And in the present case there is no harm in recalling again one of the wise sentences of our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin, who says:

13.105

“‘’Struth! What might not happen in this world. A flea might swallow an elephant.’”

13.105

Beelzebub intended to say something more, but at that moment a ship’s servant entered and, approaching, handed him an “etherogram” in his name.

13.105

When Beelzebub had finished listening to the contents of the said “etherogram” and the ship’s servant had gone, Hassein turned to Beelzebub again with the following words:

13.105

“Dear Grandfather, please go on talking about the three-centered beings arising and existing on that interesting planet called Earth.”

13.105

Beelzebub having looked at his grandson again with a special smile, and having made a very strange gesture with his head, continued to speak as follows: