Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

CHAPTER 29
The Fruits of Former Civilizations and the Blossoms of the Contemporary

Chapter.Page

29.413

According to the associative flow of my tales concerning the three-brained beings breeding on the planet Earth who have taken your fancy, I must now, my boy, without fail explain to you a little more about those two powerful communities there named ‘Greeks’ and ‘Romans,’ who made a ‘clean sweep’ from the surface of that ill-fated planet of even the memory of the results obtained from the Most Saintly Labors of the Essence-loving Ashiata Shiemash.

29.413

“I must tell you first of all that at that period when on the surface of your planet, on the continent of Asia, there was actualized from Above within the presence of a three-brained being the already definitized sacred conception of our now Omnicosmic Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash, and later also, during the periods of His Very Saintly Activities and the subsequent gradual destruction by your favorites of all the results obtained from them, there also existed on the neighboring continent, then already called Europe, great numbers of those strange three-brained beings who have taken your fancy, and who had already long before grouped themselves into various independent communities.

29.413

“Among the number of those independent communities, there were during those periods, owing to those cosmic laws which I have once mentioned to you, those two large and, as they say there, ‘most-powerful’ communities, that is to say, well organized and possessing more means for the processes of reciprocal destruction, the Greeks and Romans.

29.414

“And about these, from the point of view of your contemporary favorites, ‘very-ancient’ communities, I must furthermore not fail to explain to you and possibly in detail, because not only did they then, as I have already said, make a clean sweep from the face of that unfortunate planet of the last results beneficial for all the three-brained beings of all subsequent epochs, and even of all traces of the memory of the Very Saintly Labors of the Essence-loving Ashiata Shiemash, but they were also the cause that real ‘nonsense’ already proceeds in the Reasons of the contemporary favorites of yours, and that there is completely atrophied in them that ‘fundamental-being-impulse’ which is the main lever of objective morality, and which is called ‘organic shame.’

29.414

“A closer acquaintance with these big groupings of your favorites and with various forms of ‘bliss’ prepared by them and which have passed to the beings of later epochs, will give you a good idea and enable you to understand exactly how separate independent communities are formed there, and also how a given community, having become powerful quite independently of the beings themselves, takes advantage of the fact and sets about destroying everything already attained by the other ‘less powerful’ communities, and forces upon them their own ‘new inventions,’ in most cases sincerely imagining that they truly are just what the others need.

29.414

“I must warn you, my boy, that my story of the history of their arising and of everything later connected with those ancient communities called Greeks and Romans is not based on the results of my personal investigations; no, I shall only give you the information about them which I got from one of those beings of our tribe who wished to remain to exist forever on that planet of yours.

29.414-5

“The circumstances were these: in descending to the planet Earth for the sixth and last time, I proposed to attain, at any cost, the final elucidation to myself of all the genuine causes why the psyche of those three-brained beings, which should be like the psyche of the rest of the three-brained beings of our Great Universe, had on that planet become so exceptionally strange.

29.415

“And having during my investigations repeatedly constated that a fundamental cause of the various abnormalities of the general psyche of the contemporary beings was what is called ‘civilization’ sown by those two large groups of beings called Greeks and Romans, I was obliged to inquire into certain details about them also.

29.415

“But as I was fully occupied at that time with my researches concerning the activities of the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash, I commissioned the elucidation of the history of the arising of these two independent groupings of your favorites—in respect of what is called, their ‘subjective-being-Being’—to that same being of our tribe who as I have already told you, still carries on an ‘undertaker’s business’ in a large city on the continent of Europe down to the present time.

29.415

“From the investigations of this countryman of ours, it seems that long ago before the period to which my tale about the majestic city of Babylon referred, namely, at the time when the process of the existence of those strange beings was proceeding mainly on the continent Asia alone, and when their chief center of culture was Tikliamish, there were on that said continent of Europe, which is now the chief place of existence of your favorites, as yet no definitely organized communities.

29.415

“There then chiefly existed on that continent two-brained and one-brained beings called ‘wild quadrupeds’ and ‘reptiles,’ but of your favorites, the biped beings, there were then on that continent only a number of small groups, almost as ‘wild’ as the ‘quadrupeds’ themselves.

29.415-6

“The occupation of these small groups of biped beings was merely the destruction of the ‘quadruped’ and ‘reptile’ beings, and occasionally also of each other.

“And the numbers of your favorites on that continent Europe only increased when emigrants from Maralpleicie, wandering from one place to another, finally arrived and settled there.

29.416

“Towards the close of that period there migrated from Tikliamish to that continent Europe a number of beings of the first Asiatic group who followed two quite distinct occupations: namely, some of them were engaged in various marine occupations, and others in what are called there ‘cattle raising’ and ‘sheep farming.’

29.416

“The cattle-raising families populated chiefly the southern shores of the continent, because those parts were at that time very convenient for the maintenance and grazing of such quadruped beings.

29.416

“And that group of terrestrial beings was then called ‘Latinaki,’ a word that signified ‘shepherds.’

29.416

“At first these shepherds existed with their families and flocks scattered in different places; but later on their numbers gradually increased, partly from the immigration of beings from the continent Asia having the same occupation as themselves, and partly because they were becoming more and more prolific, owing to the fact that the Nature of the planet Earth was beginning to adapt Herself to the deteriorating quality of the vibrations She demanded that had to be formed from their radiations, by substituting those vibrations which are now obtained only from the process of their sacred Rascooarno, or as they say ‘from-their-death.’

29.416

“And thus when, thanks to all this, their numbers had considerably increased and external conditions demanded frequent relations between separate families, they formed their first common place, and this common place they called ‘Rimk.’

29.417

“It was from that group of Asiatic shepherds that the later famous Romans originated; their name having been taken from the name of their first common place Rimk.

29.417

“Those Asiatic beings who were engaged in ‘marine occupations,’ namely, in fishing and in gathering sponges, coral, and seaweed, emigrated with their families for the convenience of their profession and settled either on the western shores of their own continent Ashhark, on the southeastern shores of the continent Europe, or on the islands of the straits which still divide the continents Asia and Europe.

29.417

“The beings of those newly formed groups of three-brained terrestrial beings were then called ‘Hellenaki,’ a word that meant ‘fishermen.’

29.417

“The number of the beings, of that group also, gradually increased owing to the same causes already mentioned respecting the group of shepherds.

29.417

“The name of the beings of this second group changed many times and finally they came to be called ‘Greeks.’

29.417

“And so, my dear boy, the beings of these two groups were one of the chief causes that the Reasons of the contemporary favorites of yours have become mechanical, and that the data for engendering the impulse of being-shame have become completely atrophied in them.

29.417

“The Greeks were the cause why the Reasons of the three-brained beings there began gradually to degenerate and ultimately became so degenerate that among contemporary beings it is already as our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin says, ‘a-real-mill-for-nonsense.’

29.417-8

“And the Romans were the cause why, as a result of successive changes, those factors are never crystallized in the presences of the contemporary three-brained beings there, which in other three-brained beings engender the impulse called ‘instinctive shame’; that is to say, the being impulse that maintains what are called ‘morals’ and ‘objective morality.’

29.418

“Thus it was that those two communities arose there, which afterwards, as it often happens there, became very solid and powerful for a definite period. And the history of their further maleficent ‘prepared inheritance’ for the beings of subsequent generations is as follows:

29.418

“According to the investigations of our mentioned countryman, it seems that the earliest ancestors of the beings of the community, which was later called ‘Greece,’ were often obliged, on account of the frequent storms at sea which hindered them in their marine occupations, to seek refuge during the rains and winds, in sheltered places, where out of boredom, they played various ‘games’ which they invented for their distraction.

29.418

“As it later became clear, these ancient fishermen amused themselves at first with such games as children now play there—but children, it must be remarked, who have not yet started contemporary schooling—because the children there who do go to school have so much homework to do, consisting chiefly of learning by rote the ‘poetry’ which various candidate Hasnamusses have composed there, that the poor children never have time to play any games.

29.418

“Briefly, these poor bored fishermen played at first the ordinary children’s games already established there long before; but afterwards when one of them invented a new game called ‘pouring-from-the-empty-into-the-void,’ they were all so pleased with it that thereafter they amused themselves with that alone.

29.418

“This game consisted in formulating some question always about some ‘fiddle-faddle’ or other, that is to say, a question about some deliberate piece of absurdity, and the one to whom the question was addressed had to give as plausible an answer as possible.

29.419

“Well, it was just this same game that became the cause of all that happened later.

29.419

“It turned out that among those ancient bored fishermen, there were several so ‘bright’ and ‘ingenious’ that they became expert in inventing, according to the principle of that peculiar ‘game,’ very long explanations.

29.419

“And when one of them discovered how to make what was afterwards called ‘parchment’ from the skin of the fish called ‘shark,’ then some of these skillful fellows, just to ‘swagger’ before their companions, even began inscribing these long explanations of theirs on these fishskins, employing those conventional signs which had been invented earlier, for another game called ‘mousetrap.’

29.419

“Still a little later, when these bored fishermen had already given place to their descendants, both these inscribed fishskins and the craze for the said peculiar ‘game’ passed on to the latter by inheritance; and these various new inventions, both their own and their ancestors’, they called first by the very high-sounding name ‘science.’

29.419

“And from then on, as the craze for ‘cooking up’ these sciences passed from generation to generation, the beings of that group, whose ancestors had been simple Asiatic fishermen, became ‘specialists’ in inventing all kinds of sciences such as these.

29.419

“These sciences, moreover, also passed from generation to generation and a number of them have reached the contemporary beings of that planet almost unchanged.

“And hence it is that almost a half of what are called the ‘egoplastikoori’ arising in the Reason of the contemporary beings of that ill-fated planet, from which what is called a ‘being-world-outlook’ is in general formed in beings, are crystallized just from the ‘truths’ invented there by those bored fishermen and their subsequent generations.

29.419-20

“Concerning the ancient shepherds who later formed the great powerful community called ‘Rome,’ their ancestors also were often forced, on account of bad weather, to put their flocks into sheltered places, and to pass the time together somehow or other.

29.420

“Being together, they had ‘various talks.’ But when everything had been talked out and they felt bored, then one of them suggested that as a relief they should take up the pastime which they called for the first time ‘cinque-contra-uno’ (five-against-one), an occupation which has been preserved down to the present time, under the same name, among their descendants who continue to arise and exist there.

29.420

“So long as only the beings of the male sex then engaged in that occupation, everything went ‘quietly and peacefully,’ but when a little later their ‘passive halves,’ that is to say their women, also joined in, who, immediately appreciating it, soon became addicted to it, they then gradually attained in these ‘occupations’ such ‘finesses,’ that even if our All-universal Arch-cunning Lucifer should rack his honorable brains, he could not even invent a tithe of the ‘turns’ these erstwhile shepherds then invented and ‘prepared’ for the beings of the succeeding generations of that ill-fated planet.

29.420

“And so, my boy, when both these independent groupings of terrestrial three-brained beings multiplied and began acquiring every variety of those effective ‘means,’ namely, the means of reciprocal destruction, whose acquisition is the usual aim of all communities there during all periods of their existence, they then began carrying out these ‘processes’ with other independent communities there—for the most part, of course, with the less powerful communities, and occasionally among themselves.

29.420-1

“Here it is extremely interesting to notice that when periods of peace occurred between these two communities there—communities of almost equal strength in respect of the possession of efficient means for the processes of reciprocal-destruction—the beings of both groups whose places of existence were adjacent often came into contact and had friendly relations with each other, with the result that little by little they picked up from each other those specialties which had first been invented by their ancestors and which had become proper to them. In other words, the result of the frequent contact of the beings of those two communities was that the Greek beings, borrowing from the Roman beings all the finesses of sexual ‘turns,’ began arranging their what are called ‘Athenian nights,’ while the Roman beings, having learned from the Greek beings how to cook up ‘sciences,’ composed their later very famous what is called ‘Roman law.’

29.421

“A great deal of time has passed since then. The inventors of both those kinds of being-manifestation have already long been destroyed, and their descendants who chanced to become ‘powerful’ have been destroyed also. And now… the contemporary three-brained beings of that planet spend, even with emotion, more than half their existence and being-energy, acquired somehow or other, in absorbing and actualizing unconsciously and sometimes even consciously those two ideals, the initiators of whose arising were the said bored Asiatic fishermen and shepherds.

29.421-2

“Well then, my boy, later on, it seems, when both these groupings of your favorites acquired many of the said efficient means for the successful destruction of the existence of beings like themselves, and when they had become quite expert in persuading, or by the potency of their means compelling beings of other countries to exchange their inner convictions for those ideals invented by their ancestors, then, as I have said, they first conquered the neighboring communities situated on the continent Europe, and afterwards, for the same purpose, with the help of the hordes they collected during that period, turned towards the continent Asia.

29.422

“And there already on the continent Asia, they began spreading that maleficent influence of theirs, first among beings populating the western shores of that continent—in whom, as I have already said, being-impulses for a more or less normal being-existence had been implanted during centuries—and afterwards, they gradually began advancing into the interior.

29.422

“This advance of theirs into the interior of the continent Asia proceeded very successfully, and their ranks were constantly being increased, chiefly because the learned beings who had been in Babylon then continued everywhere on the continent Asia to infect the Reasons of beings with their Hasnamussian political ideas.

29.422

“And they were also helped very much by the fact that there were still preserved in the instincts of the Asiatic beings the results of the influences of the initiates and priests, disciples of the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash, who in their preachings had inculcated, among other things, one of the chief commandments of Ashiata Shiemash which declared:

29.422

“‘Do not kill another even when your own life is in danger.’

29.422

“Profiting by all this, these former fishermen and shepherds were very easily able to advance, destroying on the way all those who declined to worship the ‘gods’ they themselves had finally acquired, that is to say, their fantastic ‘science’ and their phenomenal depravity.

29.422

“At first these ‘sowers-of-evil’ for all the three-brained beings there of all the succeeding generations, arising on the continent Europe, and especially the Greeks, moving into the interior of the continent Asia, acted if slowly nevertheless effectively.

29.422-3

“But when some time later there appeared and stood at the head of what is called an ‘army’ that completely formed Arch-Vainglorious Greek, the future Hasnamuss, Alexander of Macedonia, then from that time on, there began to proceed that clean sweep of the last remnants of the results of the very saintly intentional labors of our now Common Cosmic Most Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash, and again there was resumed, as it is said, the ‘old-old-story.’

29.423

“Although every time the place of the center of culture of your favorites, those strange three-brained beings, has been changed, and what is called a new ‘civilization’ has arisen, and each new civilization has brought for the beings of succeeding epochs something both new and maleficent, nevertheless, not one of these numerous civilizations has ever prepared so much evil for the beings of later epochs, including of course the contemporary epoch, as that famous ‘Greco-Roman civilization.’

29.423

“Without mentioning the large number of other minor psychic features, unbecoming to be possessed by three-brained beings and now existing in the presences of your favorites, that civilization is mainly to blame for the complete disappearance from the presences of the three-brained beings of succeeding generations, and especially of the contemporary beings, of the possibility for crystallizing the data for ‘sane-logical-mentation’ and for engendering the impulse of ‘being-self-shame.’

29.423

“Namely, the ‘ancient-Greek-fantastic-sciences’ caused complete atrophy of the former, and the ‘ancient-Roman-depravity,’ of the latter.

29.423-4

“In the early period of that Greco-Roman civilization, the said maleficent impulses, which have now become being-impulses, namely, the ‘passion-for-inventing-fantastic-sciences’ and the ‘passion-for-depravity,’ were inherent in the Greek and Roman beings alone; and later, when, as I have already said, the beings of both these communities chanced to acquire the said strength and began coming into contact with and influencing the beings of other communities, the beings of many other communities of your unfortunate favorites gradually began to be infected by these peculiar and unnatural being-impulses.

29.424

“This took place, on the one hand, as I have already said, owing to the constant influence of both these communities, and, on the other hand, owing to that peculiarity of their psyche—common to all the three-brained beings of that planet, and already well fixed in it before this—which is called there ‘imitation.’

29.424

“And thus, little by little, these ‘inventions’ of those two ancient communities have brought it about that already, at the present time, the psyche of your favorites—shaky enough already before then—has now become so unhinged in all of them, without exception, that both their ‘world outlook’ and the whole ordering of their daily existence rest and proceed exclusively on the basis of those two said inventions of the beings of that Greco-Roman civilization, namely, on the basis of fantasying, and of ‘striving-for-sexual-gratification.’

29.424

“Here it is very interesting to notice that although, as I have already told you, thanks to the inheritance from the ancient Romans, ‘organic-self-shame’—proper to the three-brained beings—has gradually and entirely disappeared from the presences of your favorites, nevertheless there has arisen in them in its place something rather like it. In the presences of your contemporary favorites there is as much as you like of this pseudo being-impulse which they also call ‘shame,’ but the data for engendering it, just as of all others, are quite singular.

29.424

“This being-impulse arises in their presences only when they do something which under their abnormally established conditions of ordinary being-existence is not acceptable to be done before others.

29.425

“But if nobody sees what they do, then nothing they do—even if in their own consciousness and their own feelings it should be undesirable—engenders any such impulse in them.

29.425

“The ‘bliss’ prepared there by the ancient Romans has in recent times already so penetrated the nature of your favorites breeding on all the continents of that ill-fated planet, that it is even difficult to say which beings of which contemporary communities have inherited most from these ‘obliging’ Romans.

29.425

“But as regards the inheritance passed down from the ancient Greeks, namely, the passion for inventing various fantastic sciences, this has not become inherent to all the three-brained beings of contemporary times equally, but it has passed down only to certain beings arising among the beings of all the contemporary large and small communities breeding on all the terra firma parts of the surface of that peculiar planet.

“Proportionately, this passion, namely, ‘to-invent-fantastic-sciences,’ has passed down from the ancient Greeks mainly to the beings of the contemporary community existing there under the name of ‘Germany.’

29.425

“The beings of that contemporary Germany can be boldly called the ‘direct-heirs-of-the-ancient-Greek-civilization’; and they can be so called, because at the present time it is just they who chiefly bring every kind of new science and invention into contemporary civilization.

29.425

“Unfortunately, my boy, the beings of that contemporary community Germany have in many respects, as it is said, surpassed the beings of ancient Greece.

29.425

“Thanks to the sciences invented by the ancient Greeks, only the being-mentation of other beings was spoiled and still continues to be spoiled.

29.425-6

“But in addition to this, the contemporary beings of that community Germany have become very skillful also in inventing those sciences, thanks to which the said specific disease there of wiseacring has been very widely spread among other of your favorites; and during the process of this disease in them, many of them semiconsciously or even quite automatically chance to notice some small detail of the common cosmic process which actualizes Everything Existing, and afterwards, informing others of it, they together use it for some of their, as they are called, new inventions, thereby adding to the number of those ‘new means,’ of which during the last two of their centuries so many have accumulated there, that their total effect has now already become, what is called, the ‘resultant-decomposing-force,’ in contradistinction to what is called the ‘resultant-creative-force’ of Nature.

29.426

“And indeed, my boy, owing merely to the sciences invented by the beings of the contemporary Germany, other three-brained beings of your planet belonging both to that same community and to other communities have now acquired the possibility of inventing, and now they almost every day invent here and there, some such new invention or new means and, employing them in the process of their existence, have now already brought it about that poor Nature there—already enfeebled without this through no fault of her own—is scarcely able to actualize what are called her ‘evolutionary’ and ‘involutionary’ processes.

29.426

“For your clear representation and better understanding how these contemporary direct heirs have surpassed their ‘legators,’ I must now explain to you also about certain widely used means existing there at the present time, which owe their existence exclusively to these ‘Nature-helping’ direct heirs of ancient Greece.

29.426-7

“I will explain to you certain of these means there, now existing and in use everywhere, which have been invented by the beings of that contemporary community Germany.

29.427

“I should like first to emphasize, by the way, one very odd phenomenon, namely, that these contemporary ‘substitutes’ for the ancient Greeks give names to their said maleficent inventions, names which for some reason or other all end in ‘ine.’

29.427

“As examples of the very many particularly maleficent inventions of those German beings, let us take just those five what are called ‘chemical substances,’ now existing there under the names of (1) satkaine, (2) aniline, (3) cocaine, (4) atropine and (5) alisarine, which chemical substances are used there at the present time by the beings of all the continents and islands as our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin says: ‘Even-without-any-economizing.’

29.427

“The first of the enumerated means, specially invented by the German beings, namely, ‘satkaine,’ is nothing else but ‘Samookoorooazar,’ that is to say, one of those seven what are called ‘neutralizing gases’ which arise and are always present in the common presence of each planet and which take part in the ‘completed crystallization’ of every definite surplanetary and intraplanetary formation, and which in separate states are always and everywhere what are called ‘indiscriminate-destroyers-of-the-already-arisen.’

29.427-8

“About this German invention, I once also learned there among other things, that when one of the beings of that community, for reasons I recently described, happened to obtain this gas from some ‘surplanetary’ and ‘intraplanetary’ definite formations, and noticed in the said way its particularity, and told several others about it, then, owing to the fact that there was then proceeding in the presences of the beings of their community, consequently in them themselves, what is called ‘the-most-intense-experiencing’ of the chief particularity of the psyche of the three-brained beings of your planet, namely, ‘the-urgent-need-to-destroy-the-existence-of-others-like-themselves’—and indeed, the beings of that community were then fully absorbed in their process of reciprocal destruction with the beings of neighboring communities—these others thereupon at once ‘enthusiastically’ decided to devote themselves entirely to finding means to employ the special property of that gas for the speedy mass destruction of the existence of the beings of other communities.

29.428

“Having begun their practical researches with this aim in view, one of them soon discovered that if this gas is concentrated in a pure state in such a way that it could be freely liberated in any given space at any given time it could easily be employed for the mentioned aim.

29.428

“That was sufficient, and from then on, this gas, artificially isolated from the general harmony of the actualization of Everything Existing, began to be liberated in a certain way into space by all the other ordinary beings of that community during the processes of reciprocal destruction, just when and just where the greatest number of beings of other, as they are called ‘hostile’ communities were grouped.

29.428

“When this isolated, particularly poisonous cosmic-substance is intentionally liberated into the atmosphere under the said conditions, and when striving to reblend with other corresponding cosmic substances it happens to enter the planetary bodies of three-brained beings nearby, it instantly and completely destroys their existence, or, at best, permanently injures the functioning of one or other part of their common presence.

29.428-9

“The second of the chemical substances I enumerated, namely, ‘aniline,’ is that chemical coloring substance, by means of which most of those surplanetary formations can be dyed from which the three-brained beings there make all kinds of objects they need in the process of their ordinary being-existence.

29.429

“Although thanks to that invention your favorites can now dye any object any color, yet, what the lastingness of the existence of these objects becomes—ah, just there lies their famous Bismarck’s ‘pet cat.’

29.429

“Before that maleficent aniline existed, the objects produced by your favorites for their ordinary existence, such, for instance, as what are called ‘carpets,’ ‘pictures,’ and various articles of wool, wood, and skin, were dyed with simple vegetable dyes, which they had learned during centuries how to obtain, and these just-enumerated objects would formerly last from five to ten or even fifteen of their centuries.

“But now, thanks merely to the aniline, or to dyes of other names into which this same aniline enters as the basis, there remains of the objects dyed with new colors at most, after about thirty years, only perhaps the memory of them.

29.429

“I must also say that the beings of the contemporary community Germany have been the cause not only that thanks to this maleficent aniline the productions of all the contemporary beings of this planet are quickly destroyed, but also that productions from ancient times have almost ceased to exist on that ill-fated planet.

29.429

“This latter occurred because for various Hasnamussian purposes and for their famous, as they call them, ‘scientific aims,’ they collected the surviving ancient productions from all countries and, not knowing how to preserve ancient objects, they only hastened their speedy destruction.

“But they used and still use those ‘antiques’ they collected as ‘models’ for ‘cheap goods’ which are everywhere known on that ill-fated planet by the name of ‘Ersatz.’

29.429-30

“As for the third of the enumerated chemical substances they invented, namely, ‘cocaine,’ that chemical substance is not only also of great assistance to Nature in more rapidly decomposing the planetary formations—in this instance, their own planetary bodies—but this chemical means has an effect on the psyche of the contemporary beings of the planet Earth surprisingly similar to that which the famous organ Kundabuffer had on the psyche of their ancestors.

29.430

“When their ancestors had that invention in themselves of the Great Angel Looisos, then, thanks to this organ, they were always exactly in the same state as the contemporary beings are when they introduce into themselves this German invention called cocaine.

29.430

“I must warn you, my boy, that even if the action of that German invention is similar to the action of the famous organ Kundabuffer, it happened without any conscious intention on the part of the contemporary beings of the community Germany; they became colleagues of the Great Angel Looisos only by chance.

29.430

“At the present time almost all the beings who become genuine representatives of contemporary civilization very meticulously and with the greatest delight and tenderness introduce into themselves this ‘blessing’ of contemporary civilization, of course, always to the glory, as our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin says, of the ‘cloven-hoofed.’

29.430

“The fourth of the enumerated chemical substances, namely, ‘atropine,’ is also everywhere there in great demand at the present time for a great variety of purposes; but its most common use is for a certain exceedingly strange purpose.

29.430

“It seems that thanks to the same abnormally established conditions there of ordinary being-existence, their organ of sight has acquired the property of regarding the faces of others as good and pleasing only when they have dark eyes.

29.431

“And when this chemical substance, called atropine, is in a certain way introduced into the eyes of beings the pupils become dilated and darker; and, because of this, most of them introduce this atropine into their eyes, in order that their faces may appear good and pleasing to others.

29.431

“And truly, my dear boy, those terrestrial beings who introduce this ‘German blessing’ into their eyes do have very ‘dark eyes’ until they are forty-five.

29.431

“I said until forty-five, because so far there has never been a case there when a being using this means could see and still continue its use after the age of forty-five.

29.431

“‘Alisarine,’ the fifth and last of the enumerated inventions, is also widespread everywhere.

29.431

“And that ‘blessing’ of contemporary civilization is used there chiefly by what are called ‘confectioners’ and other specialists who prepare for the other beings of that planet most ‘tasty’ articles for their first food.

29.431

“The confectioners and other professionals there who prepare the said tasty articles for the first food of the rest of your favorites use this same German ‘sure-fire’ composition, alisarine, of course unconsciously, for that purpose which has there already finally become the ideal for the whole of the contemporary civilization, which purpose is expressed in the language of our honored Mullah Nassr Eddin in the following words: As-long-as-everything-looks-fine-and-dandy-to-me-what-does-it-matter-if-the-grass-doesn’t-grow.’

29.431-2

“Anyhow, my boy, those contemporary substitutes for the beings of ancient Greece are already now a great help to poor Nature—though only in the process of decomposition—with all their practical attainments based on the ‘sciences’ they have themselves invented. It is not for nothing that our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin has the following wise expression: ‘Better-pull-ten-hairs-a-day-out-of-your-mother’s-head-than-not-help-Nature.’

29.432

“Strictly speaking, the capacity to cook up ‘fantastic sciences’ and to devise new methods for ordinary being-existence there, did not pass from the ancient Greeks to the beings of that contemporary Germany alone; the same capacity was perhaps no less also inherited by the beings of another contemporary community, also an independent one, and also in her turn enjoying dominion.

29.432

“That other contemporary community of your favorites is called ‘England.’

29.432

“There has even passed from ancient Greece to the beings of that second contemporary community England, and directly to them alone, one of their most maleficent inventions which the beings of that contemporary community have most thoroughly adopted and now actualize in practice.

29.432

“This particularly maleficent invention of theirs the ancient Greeks called ‘Diapharon,’ and the contemporary beings call ‘sport.’

29.432

“About this contemporary sport there I shall explain to you in as much detail as possible at the end of my tale; but you must meanwhile know, that though the beings of that community England also now invent large quantities of the various new objects required by your favorites in the process of their ordinary being-existence, nevertheless they do not invent chemical substances like the beings of the contemporary community Germany, no… they invent chiefly what are called ‘metalwares.’

29.432-3

“Especially in recent times, they have become expert in inventing and in distributing to the beings existing over the whole of the surface of your planet, vast quantities of every kind of metalwares called there locks, razors, mousetraps, revolvers, scythes, machine guns, saucepans, hinges, guns, penknives, cartridges, pens, mines, needles, and many other things of the same kind.

29.433

“And ever since the beings of this contemporary community started inventing these practical objects, the ordinary existence of the three-brained beings of your planet has been, just as our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin says, ‘not-life-but-free-jam.’

29.433

“The beings of that contemporary community have been the benefactors of the other contemporary beings of your planet, offering them, as they say there, ‘philanthropic aid,’ especially as regards their first being-duty, namely, the duty of carrying out from time to time the process of ‘reciprocal destruction.’

29.433

“Thanks to them, the discharge of that being-duty of theirs has gradually become for your contemporary favorites, the ‘merest trifle.’

29.433

“In the absence of those inventions it used to be exceedingly arduous for these poor favorites of yours to fulfill that being-duty, because they were formerly forced to spend a good deal of sweat for it.

29.433

“But thanks to the adaptations of every kind invented by those contemporary beings, it is now as again our esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin says, ‘just roses, roses.’

29.433

“The contemporary beings now scarcely need to make any effort whatsoever in order to destroy completely the existence of beings like themselves.

29.433

“Sometimes sitting quietly in what they call their ‘smoking rooms’ they can destroy, just as a pastime, as it were, tens and sometimes even hundreds of others like themselves.

29.433

“I might as well now, I think, tell you a little also about the still existing direct descendants of the beings of the mentioned Greek-Roman civilizations.

29.433-4

“The descendants of the beings of the once ‘great’ and ‘powerful’ community Greece there, still continue to exist and also to have their own independent community, but for the other independent communities there, they have at the present time scarcely any significance whatever.

29.434

“They already no longer do as their ancestors did there, who were supreme specialists in cooking up all kinds of ‘fantastic sciences’; for if a contemporary Greek cooked up a new science, the beings of the other communities of the present time would not pay it the smallest attention.

29.434

“And they would pay no attention to it, chiefly because that community has not at the present time enough of what are called ‘guns’ and ‘ships’ to be for the other contemporary beings there what is called an ‘authority.’

29.434

“But though the descendants of the former great Greeks, namely, the Greeks of the present time, have lost the trick of being what is called an ‘imagined-authority’ for other three-brained beings there, they have now perfectly adapted themselves there on almost all the continents and islands to keeping what are called ‘shops,’ where without any haste, slowly and gently, they trade in what are called ‘sponges,’ ‘halva,’ ‘Rahat-Lokoum,’ ‘Turkish delight,’ etc., and sometimes ‘Persian-dried-fruit,’ never forgetting the dried fish called ‘Kefal.’

29.434

“And as for the descendants of the famous Romans, although they too continue to arise and exist, they no longer even bear the name of their ancestors, though they still call the chief place of their community by the name ‘Rome.’

29.434

“The contemporary beings of the community formed by the descendants of those former shepherds, afterwards the great Romans, are called by the other beings there ‘Italians.’

29.434-5

“Except for that specific being-impulse which the ancient Roman beings were the first on that planet to crystallize in their presences, and which subsequently spread gradually to all the other three-brained beings of that planet, scarcely anything else has passed by inheritance from their ancestors to these beings called Italians.

29.435

“The beings of that contemporary community Italy exist at the present time very quietly and peacefully, doing nothing more than unostentatiously inventing ever new forms of their harmless and very innocent what is called ‘macaroni.’

29.435

“Nevertheless, there had passed to certain beings of that contemporary Italy, by heredity from their ancestors, one special and very peculiar ‘property’ called ‘giving-pleasure-to-others.’

29.435

“Only they manifest this inherited need, that is to say this ‘giving-pleasure,’ not towards beings there like themselves, but to beings of other forms.

29.435

“It must in fairness be stated that the said special property passed to beings of various parts of contemporary Italy not from the great Romans alone; this inherited property became more ‘naturalized’ by their ancestors of considerably later epochs, namely, at the time when they began spreading, among other beings both of their own community and of the neighboring weaker communities, the doctrines, already changed for their egoistic purposes, of a certain genuine ‘sacred-Messenger-from-Above.’

29.435

“At the present time the beings of various parts of contemporary Italy actualize this property of giving-pleasure-to-others in the following way:

29.435-6

“The existence of the quadruped beings called ‘sheep’ and ‘goats,’ whose planetary bodies they also use for their first food, they do not destroy all at once; but in order to give this ‘pleasure’ they do it ‘slowly’ and ‘gently’ over a period of many days; that is to say, one day they take off one leg, then a few days later, a second leg, and so on, for as long as the sheep or goat still breathes. And sheep and goats can breathe without the said parts of their common presence for a very long time because, in the main functions of the taking in of cosmic substances for the possibility of existing, these parts do not participate, though they do participate in the functions which actualize those impulses giving self-sensations.

29.436

“After what I have already said, there seems no need to say any more about the descendants of those Romans who were once so ‘menacing’ and so ‘great’ for the other communities there.

29.436

“Now let us talk about that particularly maleficent invention of the ancient Greeks, which is being actualized in practice at the present time by the beings of the contemporary community there, called England, and which invention they call ‘sport.’

29.436

“Not only have the beings of the contemporary community, England, namely, those beings who chiefly actualize during the process of their ordinary existence this particularly maleficent invention of the ancient Greeks, added, thanks to its maleficent consequences, one more sure-fire factor for shortening the duration of their existence—already trifling enough without that—but also, experiencing in their turn at the present time the greatness of their community, they are in consequence authorities for the other three-brained beings there; and, furthermore, because they have made the actualizing of the invention in practice their ideal and its spreading their aim, they, at the present time, by every possible means, strongly infect the beings of all other large and small communities of that ill-fated planet with that invention of theirs.

29.436

“The basis for that very serious misconception there was the disappearance from the common presences of those favorites of yours of the possibility of the crystallization in them of those factors which actualize ‘logical mentation’ in three-brained beings.

29.436-7

“And in consequence of the absence in them of this ‘logical mentation,’ all of them, almost without exception, merely because certain candidates for Hasnamuss there have asserted that they could obtain something ‘good’ for themselves by means of this sport—an assertion they believe with all their presence—have now, in the hope of attaining this same something, given themselves up entirely to that sport.

29.437

“None of these unfortunates know and probably never will reflect that not only is nothing good obtained by them from this maleficent sport of theirs, but they, as I have already told you, solely owing to this sport alone, still further shorten the duration of their existence which is already sufficiently trifling without this.

29.437

“So that you may better represent to yourself and understand why the duration of their existence is being still further diminished on account of this sport, it is now opportune to explain to you a little more in detail about what I have already promised you to explain, namely, the difference between the duration of being-existence according to the ‘Fulasnitamnian’ principle and according to the ‘Itoklanoz’ principle.

29.437

“You remember that when I explained to you how these favorites of yours define the ‘flow-of-time’ I said that when the organ Kundabuffer with all its properties was removed from their presences, and they began to have the same duration of existence as all normal three-brained beings arising everywhere in our Universe, that is, according to what is called the Fulasnitamnian principle, they also should then have existed without fail until their ‘second-being-body-Kesdjan’ had been completely coated in them and finally perfected by Reason up to the sacred ‘Ischmetch.’

29.437-8

“But later, when they began existing in a manner more and more unbecoming for three-brained beings and entirely ceased actualizing in their presences their being-Partkdolg-duty, foreseen by Great Nature, by means of which alone it is possible for three-brained beings to acquire in their presences the data for coating their said higher-parts—and when, in consequence of all this, the quality of their radiations failed to respond to the demands of the Most Great common-cosmic Trogoautoegocratic process—then Great Nature was compelled, for the purpose of ‘equalizing-vibrations,’ gradually to actualize the duration of their existence according to the principle called Itoklanoz, that is the principle upon which in general is actualized the duration of existence of one-brained and two-brained beings who have not the same possibilities as the three-brained beings, and who are therefore unable to actualize in their presences, the said—foreseen by Nature—‘Partkdolg-duty.’

29.438-9

“According to this principle, the duration of being-existence and also the whole of the contents of their common presences are in general acquired from the results arising from the following seven actualizations surrounding them, namely, from:

(1) Heredity in general
(2) Conditions and environment at the moment of conception
(3) The combination of the radiations of all the planets of their solar system during their formation in the womb of their productress
(4) The degree of being-manifestation of their producers during the period they are attaining the age of responsible being
(5) The quality of being-existence similar to themselves around them
(6) The quality of what are called the ‘Teleokrimalnichnian’ thought-waves formed in the atmosphere surrounding them also during their period of attaining the age of majority—that is, the sincerely manifested good wishes and actions on the part of what are called the ‘beings-of-the-same-blood,’ and finally,
(7) The quality of what are called the being egoplastikoori of the given being himself, that is his being-efforts for the transubstantiation in himself of all the data for obtaining objective Reason.

29.439

“The chief particularity of existence according to this principle Itoklanoz is that in the presences of beings existing according to it, dependent upon the enumerated seven exterior actualizations, there are crystallized in their ‘being-localizations’ which represent in beings the central places of the sources of actualization of all the separate independent parts of their common presence—or, as your favorites say, in their brains—what are called ‘Bobbin-kandelnosts,’ that is to say, something that gives in the given localizations or brains a definite quantity of possible associations or experiencings.

29.439

“And so, my boy, because these contemporary favorites of yours, these three-brained beings of the planet Earth, already arise only according to the principle Itoklanoz, therefore from the moment of conception up to the age of responsible being there are crystallized in their brains these Bobbin-kandelnosts with very definite possibilities of actualizing the processes of association.

29.439

“For the greater elucidation of this question and for your better understanding, and also not to waste time on explanations concerning the essence itself and also the forms of functioning of such definite cosmic realizations as these just-mentioned Bobbin-kandelnosts, which are lawfully crystallized in the localizations or brains of those beings who exist only on the basis of Itoklanoz, I intend to take as an elucidating example just those ‘Djamtesternokhi’ such as your favorites also have and which they call ‘mechanical watches.’

29.439-40

“As you already well know, although such Djamtesternokhi or mechanical watches are of different what are called ‘systems,’ yet they are all constructed on the same principle of ‘tension-or-pressure-of-the-unwinding-spring.’

29.440

“One system of Djamtesternokhi or mechanical watch contains a spring exactly calculated and arranged so that the length of the duration of its tension from unwinding may be sufficient for twenty-four hours; another system has a spring for a week, a third for a month, and so on.

29.440

“The Bobbin-kandelnost in the brains of beings existing only according to the principle Itoklanoz corresponds to the spring in mechanical watches of various systems.

“Just as the duration of the movement of mechanical watches depends upon the spring they contain, so the duration of the existence of beings depends exclusively on the Bobbin-kandelnosts formed in their brains during their arising and during the process of their further formation.

29.440

“Just as the spring of a watch has a winding of a definite duration, so these beings also can associate and experience only as much as the possibilities for experiencing put into them by Nature during the crystallization of those same Bobbin-kandelnosts in their brains.

29.440

“They can associate and consequently exist just so much, and not a whit more nor less.

29.440

“As mechanical watches can act as long as the spring has what is called ‘the-tension-of-winding,’ so the beings in whose brains the said Bobbin-kandelnosts are crystallized can experience and consequently exist until these Bobbin-kandelnosts formed in their brains—owing to the mentioned seven external conditions—are used up.

29.440

“And so, my boy, as the results of Partkdolg-duty were no longer thereafter obtained in the presences of your favorites, and the duration of their existence began to depend exclusively on the results of the seven accidentally arranged external conditions I have just enumerated, then thanks to all this, the length of their existence, especially among the contemporary beings, has become very varied.

29.440-1

“At the present time, the duration of their existence may be from one of their minutes up to seventy or ninety of their years.

29.441

“And so, owing to all I have just said, however your favorites may exist, whatever measures they may adopt and even if, as they say, they should ‘put-themselves-in-a-glass-case,’ as soon as the contents of the Bobbin-kandelnosts crystallized in their brains are used up, one or another of their brains immediately ceases to function.

29.441

“The difference between mechanical watches and your contemporary favorites is only that in mechanical watches there is one spring, while your favorites have three of these independent Bobbin-kandelnosts.

29.441

“And these independent Bobbin-kandelnosts in all the three independent ‘localizations’ in three-brained beings have the following names:

“The first: the Bobbin-kandelnost of the ‘thinking-center.’

“The second: the Bobbin-kandelnost of the ‘feeling-center.’

“The third: the Bobbin-kandelnost of the ‘moving-center.’

29.441

“Even that fact, which I have recently often repeated, namely, that the process of the sacred Rascooarno is actualized for these favorites of yours in thirds—or, as they themselves would say, they begin to ‘die-in-parts’—proceeds also from the fact that, arising and being formed only according to the principle Itoklanoz and existing nonharmoniously, they disproportionately use up the contents, namely, their Bobbin-kandelnosts of these three separate independent brains, and hence it is that such a horrible ‘dying’ as is not proper to three-brained beings frequently occurs to them.

29.441

“During my stay there among them, I personally very often constated their ‘dying-by-thirds.’

29.441-2

“This was possible because, although, in the presences of your favorites, especially the contemporary ones, the Bobbin-kandelnost of one of their brains may be entirely used up, nevertheless the beings themselves would sometimes continue to exist for quite a long time.

29.442

“For instance, it often happens there, that, owing to their specifically abnormal existence, the contents of one of the Bobbin-kandelnosts may be used up in one of them, and if it is of the moving-center, or as they themselves call it, the ‘spinal-brain,’ then although such a contemporary three-brained being there continues to ‘think’ and to ‘feel,’ yet he has already lost the possibility of intentionally directing the parts of his planetary body.

29.442

“Here it is interesting to notice that when one of your contemporary favorites already partially dies for good in this way, then their contemporary Zirlikners, or as they are called ‘physicians,’ look upon such a death as most certainly a disease, and with every kind of wiseacring that has become proper to them, start treating it; and they give these supposed diseases every sort of name consonant with an ancient language utterly unknown to them, called ‘Latin.’

29.442

“The very widely spread diseases there have such names as the following: ‘hemiplegia,’ ‘paraplegia,’ ‘paralysis progressiva essentialis,’ ‘tabes dorsalis,’ ‘paralysis agitans,’ ‘sclerosis disseminata,’ and so on and so forth.

29.442-3

“Such deaths by thirds, there on the planet Earth which has taken your fancy, have occurred particularly frequently during the last two centuries, and they occur to those of your favorites who, thanks either to their profession, or to one of their what are called ‘passions,’ arising and acquired by the beings belonging to all large and small communities there, on account of the same abnormally arranged conditions of their ordinary being-existence, have during their being-existence lived through in a greater or smaller degree the contents of the Bobbin-kandelnost of one or another of their being-brains.

29.443

“For instance, a one-third death on account of the Bobbin-kandelnost of the moving-center or ‘spinal-brain’ often occurs there among those terrestrial beings who give themselves up to that occupation which the beings belonging to the contemporary community England now practice, thanks to the maleficent invention of the ancient Greeks, and which maleficent occupation they now call sport.

29.443

“The character of the pernicious consequences of that maleficent occupation there you will well understand when I tell you that during my stay among those favorites of yours I once prepared a special section of my statistics for elucidating to myself how long these three-brained beings there can exist, who become what are called ‘wrestlers’ by profession, and never once in those statistics of mine, did I notice that any of them had existed longer than forty-nine of their years.

29.443

“And a one-third death through the premature using up of the Bobbin-kandelnost of the feeling-center occurs for the most part among those terrestrial beings who become by profession what are called ‘representatives-of-Art.’

29.443

“Most of these terrestrial professionals, especially the contemporary ones, first fall ill with one or another form of what is called ‘psychopathy,’ and thanks to this, they later in their psychopathy intentionally learn, as they say, to ‘feel’; and thereafter repeatedly feeling these abnormal being-impulses, they gradually use up the contents of the Bobbin-kandelnost of their feeling-center, and thus disharmonizing the tempo of their own common presences bring themselves to that peculiar end which is not often met with even among them there.

29.443-4

“Here, by the way, it is very interesting also to notice that the one-third death through the feeling-center occurs among your favorites also thanks to one very peculiar form of ‘psychopathy,’ called there ‘altruism.’

29.444

“And concerning premature partial death through the Bobbin-kandelnost of the thinking-center—the deaths of this kind among your favorites occur in recent times more and more frequently.

“This kind of death through the thinking-center occurs there chiefly among those favorites of yours who try to become or have already become scientists of new formation, and also among those who during the period of their existence fall ill with the craze for reading what are called ‘books’ and ‘newspapers.’

29.444

“The result among those three-brained beings there of reading superfluously and associating only by thoughts, is that the contents of the Bobbin-kandelnost of their thinking-center are exhausted before the contents of the Bobbin-kandelnosts of their other being-centers.

29.444

“And so, my boy, all these misfortunes, namely, the shortening of the duration of their existence and also many other consequences, maleficent for them themselves, occur to your favorites exclusively only because they have even until now not yet learned of the existence of the cosmic law called ‘Equalization-of-many-sourced-vibrations.’

29.444

“If only such an idea occurred to them and they were merely to perform their usual wiseacrings with it, perhaps then they would get to understand one very simple, as they call it, ‘secret.’

29.444

“I admit that somebody would be certain to understand this ‘secret’ because, in the first place it is simple and obvious, and secondly because they discovered it long ago and they even often employed it in what they call ‘practical use.’

29.444-5

“They even use this simple secret, to which I referred, for those mechanical-watches which we took for comparison as an elucidating example concerning the duration of their existence.

29.445

“In all the mechanical watches of various systems they use this said simple secret for regulating what is called the ‘tension’ of the said spring or the corresponding part of the general mechanism of the watch; and it is called, it seems, the ‘regulator.’

29.445

“By means of this regulator it is possible to make the mechanism of a watch, wound for instance for twenty-four hours, go a whole month, and on the contrary, thanks to this regulator, it is possible to make the same winding for twenty-four hours finish in five minutes.

29.445

“In the common presence of every being existing merely on the basis of Itoklanoz, ‘something’ similar to the regulator in a mechanical watch is present and is called ‘Iransamkeep’; this ‘something’ means: ‘not-to-give-oneself-up-to-those-of-one’s-associations-resulting-from-the-functioning-of-only-one-or-another-of-one’s-brains.’

29.445

“But even if they should understand such a simple secret it will be all just the same; they still would not make the necessary being-effort, quite accessible even to the contemporary beings and thanks to which, by the foresight of Nature, beings in general acquire the possibility of what is called ‘harmonious association,’ by virtue of which alone energy is created for active being-existence in the presence of every three-brained being and consequently in them themselves. But at the present time, this energy can be elaborated in the presences of your favorites only during their quite unconscious state, that is to say during what they call ‘sleep.’

29.445-6

“But in your favorites, specially in your contemporary favorites, who exist constantly passively under the direction of only one of the separate spiritualized parts of their common presence and thereby constantly manifest themselves entirely by their factors for negative properties also lawfully arisen in them, and hence, by negative manifestations, there proceeds in them that same disproportionate expenditure of the contents of their various Bobbin-kandelnosts, that is to say, the possibilities, placed in them by Nature according to law, of action by only one or only two of their brains, are always experienced, in consequence of which the contents of one or two of their Bobbin-kandelnosts are prematurely exhausted; whereupon, just like those mechanical watches in which the winding is run down or the force of their regulators is weakened, they cease to act.

29.446

“Sometime later, I shall explain to you in detail not only why, when beings, existing only according to the principle Itoklanoz, exist by the direction of only one or two of their spiritualized sources, and not harmoniously, that is to say, with all three combined, and in agreement, that particular brain of theirs in which there were superfluous associations is prematurely used up in them and consequently dies during the period of its existence, but also why, owing to this, the other Bobbin-kandelnosts also are used up, even without their own action.

29.446

“But here you must also know that even on your planet, one still occasionally finds one of your favorites whose duration of planetary existence extends to five of their centuries.

29.446-7

“You will then understand very well, that in the case of certain of your favorites even of recent times, who, by some means or other, find out and correctly transubstantiate in their Reason concerning certain details of the law of association proceeding in the separate brains of beings, and also concerning the reciprocal action of these independent associations, and who exist more or less according to what I have said, the Bobbin-kandelnosts formed in their separate being-brains are not used up, as they are among the other beings there, but their common presence acquires the possibility of existing much longer than the other three-brained beings there.

29.447

“During my stay there for the last time, I myself personally met several of these terrestrial contemporary three-brained beings who were already two, three, and even about four of their centuries old. I met them mostly among a small ‘brotherhood’ of the three-brained beings there, composed of beings from almost all of their what are called ‘religions,’ and whose permanent place of existence was in the middle of the continent Asia.

29.447

“The beings of that brotherhood, it seems, partly elucidated for themselves the mentioned laws of association in being-brains, and in part such information reached them from ancient times through genuine initiates there.

29.447

“As for that same contemporary community, whose beings have become the chief victims of that particularly maleficent invention of the beings of the said ancient civilization, they not only now use it in the process of their own existence but they try to infect strongly the beings of all the other communities with the same evil. Moreover, owing to that maleficent sport of theirs, these unfortunates not only still further diminish the duration of their own existence—already trifling without this—but thanks to that action of theirs, they will, in my opinion, eventually entail for their community what quite recently occurred to a large community there named ‘Russia.’

29.447-8

“I thought about it during my stay there before my final departure from that planet.

“And I first began thinking about it when I learned that the power-possessing beings also of that no less great contemporary community were already utilizing that maleficent means of theirs, sport, for their own Hasnamussian aims, exactly as the power-possessing beings of the community Russia had, for their similar aims, utilized what is called ‘the-question-of-Russian-vodka.’

“Just as the power-possessing beings of the community Russia then tried, by every kind of artifice, to instill into the weak wills of the ordinary beings the necessity of the intensive use of the said ‘Russian vodka,’ so also the power-possessing beings of that community England are now already also maneuvering to intrigue the ordinary beings of their community with this same sport and to urge them to it by every means.

29.448

“The apprehensions which then arose in me are already, it seems, being justified.

29.448

“And I conclude this from the etherogram I recently received from the planet Mars, in which among other things it was said that though there are more than two and a half millions of what are called ‘unemployed-beings’ in that community England, yet the power-possessing beings there take no measures concerning this, but endeavor to spread still more widely among them that same famous sport of theirs.

29.448

“Just as in the large community Russia the contents of all what are called ‘newspapers’ and ‘magazines’ used to be always devoted to the question of Russian vodka, so now in that community England, more than half of the text of all their ‘evil-sowers’ is devoted to that famous sport.”