Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

CHAPTER 36
Just a Wee Bit More About the Germans

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Beelzebub began thus:

“From St. Petersburg I first of all went to what are called the Scandinavian countries, and after traveling through these countries, I settled in the chief point of the beings of the contemporary grouping called ‘Germany.’”

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Having said this and having patted the curly head of Hassein, Beelzebub with a good-natured smile but with an admixture of what is called slyness, continued thus:

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“Now, my boy, wishing to give you a certain understanding of the peculiar psyche of the three-brained beings of this contemporary European grouping also, I will this time change my practice, namely, of initiating you into various details for elucidating information, but will set you such a problem that from the solving of it you will in the first place exhaustively make clear to yourself the specificness of the psyche of the beings of just this European grouping, and in the second place, it will serve as ideal practice for your mentation.

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“This original problem which I have devised for you is that while actively meditating, you are to deduce those logical data, the totality of which should make clear to you the very essence of the reason why just among the beings of this contemporary European grouping, in whatever part of what they call their ‘Fatherland’ they happen to be, one innocent custom obtains, according to which, whenever they gather in any place for some feast or other, or simply for what is called a ‘spree,’ they unfailingly and invariably sing one and the same song, composed by themselves and in the highest degree original, consisting of the following words:

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Blodsinn, Blodsinn,
Du mein Vergnugen,
Stumpfsinn, Stumpfsinn,
Du meine Lust.

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“And so, my boy, if you succeed in making anything out of this fact, then for your common presence there will be actualized in full the wise saying of our dear teacher, Mullah Nassr Eddin, which he expressed in the following words: ‘The-very-greatest-happiness-consists-in-obtaining-the-pleasurable-with-the-profitable.’

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“For you it will be pleasurable because you will have ideal practice for your active mentation, and profitable, because you will thoroughly understand the specificness of the psyche of the three-brained beings who interest you, who breed on the planet Earth, and who belong to this contemporary European grouping.

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“In view of the fact, as I have once already told you, that the beings of this contemporary grouping are the direct substitutes of the ancient Greeks in respect of ‘inventing’ every possible kind of ‘science,’ and in view of the fact that your deductions from the problem I have set you might be diametrically opposite to confrontative-logical possibilities, I find it necessary to help you a little and to inform you further concerning two facts.

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“The first fact is that certain words of this song have no corresponding words in any other language, in spite of the fact that this planet of yours is called, in respect of the existence there of an innumerable number of languages, a ‘thousand-tongued-hydra’; and the second fact is that when it finally became inherent to the beings of this grouping, just as to the ancient Greeks, to invent every maleficent means for ‘disintegrating’ what is called ‘logical-being-mentation,’ already sufficiently disintegrated without this, they also invented among other things for their language, a certain so-called ‘grammatical-rule,’ according to which they always during any kind of ‘exchange of opinions,’ even to the present day, place the particle of negation after the affirmative, as for instance, they always, instead of saying ‘I-do-not-want-this,’ say ‘I-want-this-not.’

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“Thanks to this grammatical rule of theirs, either listener during an exchange of opinions, first of all receives a suggestion as if it were subject to actualization and thus there must proceed in him a certain ‘being-Diardookin,’ or as they themselves would say, a certain ‘experiencing,’ and only later, at the end, when speaking according to their grammatical rule, do they pronounce their famous ‘nicht’; so that each time, as a result, there is accumulated in their common presences that which in totality actualizes, though slowly yet surely, this mentioned ‘specificness’ in their common psyche, and from this fact, you should be able to elucidate this original problem I have set you.”