Chapter 42

CHAPTER 42
Beelzebub in America

Chapter.Page
42.918	Two “Dionosks” later, when the intersystem ship Karnak had resumed its falling, and the confirmed followers of our respected Mullah Nassr Eddin had again sat down in their usual seats, Hassein once more turned to Beelzebub with the following words:
42.918	“My dear Grandfather! May I remind you, as you bade me, about… the three-brained beings… of the planet Earth… about those… how are they called?… about the beings who breed and exist just on the diametrically opposite side of the place where contemporary terrestrial civilization is flourishing… About those three-brained beings there, who, as you were saying, are very great devotees of the ‘fox trot.’”
42.918	“Ah! About those Americans?”
42.918	“Yes, that’s it, about those Americans,” joyously exclaimed Hassein.
42.918	“Of course, I remember. I did, indeed, promise to tell you a little also about those contemporary queer ducks there.”
42.918	And Beelzebub began thus:
42.918	“I happened to visit that part of the surface of your planet now called ‘North America,’ just before my final departure from that solar system.
42.918	“I went there from my last place of existence on that planet, namely, from the city Paris of the continent of Europe.
42.918-9	“From the continent of Europe I sailed there on a steamship, according to the custom of all contemporary what are called ‘dollar holders,’ and arrived in the capital of ‘North America,’ in the city of New York, or as it is sometimes called there, the ‘city of the melting pot of the races of the Earth.’
42.919	“From the pier I went straight to a hotel called the ‘majestic’ which had been recommended to me by one of my Paris acquaintances and which for some reason or other was additionally, though not officially, called ‘Jewish.’
42.919	“Having settled in this majestic hotel, I went the same day to look up a certain ‘Mister’ there, who also had been recommended to me by still another of my Paris acquaintances.
42.919	“By this word ‘Mister’ every being of the male sex is called on that continent who does not wear what is called a ‘skirt.’
42.919	“When I found this Mister, to whom I had a letter of introduction, he, as is proper to every genuine American businessman, was up to his eyes in innumerable, as is said there, ‘dollar businesses.’
42.919	“I think I might as well remark now at the very beginning of my elucidations about these Americans, that those three-brained beings there, especially the contemporary ones, who constitute the root population on this part of the surface of your planet, are in general almost all occupied only with these dollar businesses.
42.919	“On the other hand, with the trades and ‘professions’ indispensable in the process of being-existence, exclusively only those beings are occupied among them, who have gone there from other continents temporarily, and for the purpose, as is said, of ‘earning money.’
42.919-20	“Even in this respect, the surrounding conditions of ordinary being-existence among your contemporary favorites, chiefly among those breeding on this continent, have been transformed so to say, into ‘Tralalaooalalalala,’ or, as our respected teacher Mullah Nassr Eddin would define it, ‘a soap bubble that lasts a long time only in a quiet medium.’
42.920	“Among them there at the present time, these surrounding conditions of ordinary collective existence have already become such, that if, for some reason or other, the specialist professionals of all the kinds necessary for their ordinary collective existence should cease to come to them from the other continents to ‘earn money,’ then it is safe to say that within a month the whole established order of their ordinary existence would completely break down, since there would be none among them who could even so much as bake bread.
42.920	“The chief cause of the gradual resulting of such an abnormality there among them is, on the one side, the law established by them themselves in respect of the rights of parents over their children and on the other hand the institution in schools for children of what is called a ‘dollar savings bank’ together with the principle of implanting in children a love of such dollars.
42.920	“Thanks to this, and to still various other peculiar external conditions of ordinary existence also established by them, themselves, just this love of ‘dollar business’ and of dollars themselves, has become, in the common presence of each of the native inhabitants of this continent who reaches responsible age, the predominant urge during his responsible what is called ‘feverish existence.’
42.920	“That is why each one of them is always doing ‘dollar business,’ and, moreover, always several of them at once.
42.920-1	“Although the aforesaid ‘Mister’ to whom I had a letter of introduction was also very busy with these ‘dollar businesses,’ he nevertheless received me very cordially. When he read the letter of introduction I presented to him, a strange process immediately began in him which has already been noticed even by certain of your favorites—it having also become inherent in your contemporary favorites in general—and which they call ‘unconscious preening.’
42.921	“And this same process proceeded in him because, in the letter I presented, the name of a certain other acquaintance of mine, also a Mister, was mentioned, who in the opinion of many, and of this ‘Mister’ also, was considered, as they call him behind his back, ‘a damn clever fellow,’ that is to say, a ‘dollar expert.’
42.921	“In spite of his having been entirely seized with this inherency, proper to your contemporary favorites, he nevertheless, as he talked with me, gradually calmed down, and eventually he informed me, that he was ‘ready to place himself entirely at my disposal.’ Suddenly, however, he remembered something, whereupon he added that to his profound regret, owing to circumstances over which he had absolutely no control, he could not possibly oblige me that day, but not until the following day, because he was extremely busy with important affairs.
42.921	“And, indeed, with the best will in the world, he could not have done so, for these unfortunate Americans, who are always governed by these dollar businesses of theirs, can do what they please only on Sundays, whereas it just happened that the day I went to see him was not a Sunday.
42.921	“There on that continent, all dollar and other businesses depend never upon the beings themselves; on the contrary, your favorites there always themselves depend entirely on these ‘businesses’ of theirs.
42.921	“In short, the day not being a Sunday, this genuine American Mister was unable to do as he pleased, namely, go along with me and introduce me to the people necessary to me, and we had therefore to agree to meet the following morning at a defined place on the famous street there called ‘Broadway.’
42.921-2	“This street Broadway is the foremost and principal street not only in this New York, but, as is said there, is the longest street in any of the large contemporary cities of your planet.
42.922	“So I set off there on the next day.
42.922	“As the ‘automobile taxi’ in which I drove to this place happened not to come from one of Mr. Ford’s factories, I arrived too soon, and consequently this ‘Mister’ was not yet there.
42.922	“While awaiting him, I began strolling about, but as all the New York what are called ‘brokers’ take their ‘constitutional’ before their famous ‘quick lunch’ just in this part of the street Broadway, the jostling in this crowded place became so great that, in order to escape it, I decided to go and sit down somewhere in some spot from where I could see the Mister I was awaiting arrive.
42.922	“A suitable spot seemed to be a neighboring typical restaurant there, from the windows of which all the passers-by could be seen.
42.922	“I must say, by the way, that there, on all that planet of yours, there are not so many restaurants in the places of existence of any other group of your favorites as there are in that New York. “They particularly abound in the main section, and moreover, the proprietors of these restaurants there are chiefly ‘Armenians,’ ‘Greeks,’ and ‘Russian Jews.’
42.922	“Now, my boy, in order that you may rest a little from active mentation, I wish for a while to confine myself entirely to the form of mentation of our dear teacher Mullah Nassr Eddin and to talk about a certain in the highest degree original custom which has prevailed during the last few years in these contemporary New York restaurants.
42.922-3	“Inasmuch as the production, importation, and consumption of what are called ‘alcoholic liquids’ have recently been strictly prohibited to the ordinary beings by the power-possessing beings of this group, and corresponding injunctions have also been given to those beings there upon whom the power-possessing beings rest their hope for their own welfare, it is now supposed to be almost impossible for the ordinary beings there to obtain such liquids. At the same time, in these New York restaurants, various alcoholic liquids called ‘Arrack,’ ‘Doosico,’ ‘Scotch whisky,’ ‘Benedictine,’ ‘Vodka,’ ‘Grand Marnier,’ and many other different liquids, under every possible kind of label, and made exclusively only on what are called ‘old barges’ lying at sea off the shores of that continent, are to be had in any quantity you please.
42.923	“The very ‘Tzimus’ of the said practice lies in this, that if you point your fourth finger and, covering one half of your mouth with your right palm, utter the name of any liquid you fancy, then immediately, without more words, that liquid is served at table—only in a bottle purporting to be lemonade or the famous ‘French Vichy.’
42.923	“Now try with all your might to exert your will and to actualize in your presence a general mobilization of your ‘perceptive organs’ so that, without missing anything at all, you may absorb and transubstantiate in yourself everything relating to just how these alcoholic liquids I have enumerated are prepared at sea on old barges off the shores of that continent.
42.923	“I regret very much that I missed making myself thoroughly familiar with all the details of this contemporary terrestrial ‘science.’
42.923	“All I managed to learn was that into all the recipes for these preparations the following acids enter—‘sulphuric,’ ‘nitric,’ and ‘muriatic’ acids, and most important of all, the ‘incantation’ of the famous contemporary German ‘Professor Kishmenhof.’
42.923	“This last ingredient, namely, Professor Kishmenhof’s incantation for alcoholic liquids, is delightfully intriguing; and it is concocted, so it is said, as follows:
42.924	“First of all, there must be prepared, according to any old recipe, already familiar to specialists in the business, a thousand bottles of liquid; precisely one thousand bottles must be prepared, because if there should be merely one bottle more or one bottle less, the incantation will not work.
42.924	“These thousand bottles must be placed on the floor and then, quietly beside them, a single bottle of any genuine alcoholic liquid existing anywhere there, must be placed and kept there for a period of ten minutes; at the end of which time, very slowly and quite indispensably, while scratching the right ear with the left hand, one must utter with certain pauses this said alcoholic incantation.
42.924	“Upon this, not only are the contents of all the thousand bottles instantly transformed into precisely that alcoholic liquid contained in the said single bottle, but every bottle of the thousand even acquires the same label borne by that one bottle of genuine alcoholic liquid.
42.924	“Among the conjuries of this unprecedented German Professor Kishmenhof, there are, as I learned, several indeed most amazing ones.
42.924	“This famous German professor, a specialist in this branch, started, as is said, ‘inventing’ these remarkable conjuries of his quite recently, that is to say, in the early years of the last great general European process of reciprocal-destruction there.
42.924	“When a food crisis supervened in his fatherland Germany, he, sympathizing with the plight of his compatriots, invented his first conjury, which consisted in the preparation of a very cheap and economical ‘chicken soup.’
42.924	“This first conjury of his is called German chicken soup, and its execution is likewise extremely interesting, namely, as follows:
42.924-5	“Into a very commodious pot, set on the hearth, common water is poured, and then a few very finely chopped leaves of parsley are strewn into it.
42.925	“Then both doors of the kitchen must be opened wide, or, if there is only one door, a window must be opened wide, and, while the incantation is very loudly pronounced, a chicken must be chased through the kitchen at full speed.
42.925	“Upon this, a most delicious ‘chicken soup’ is ready hot in the pot.
42.925	“I heard further that during the years of that great process of reciprocal-destruction, the beings of Germany made use of this conjury on a colossal scale, this method of preparing chicken soup having proved in practice to be, as it were, good, or at least extremely economical.
42.925	“The reason is that a single chicken could do duty for quite a long time, because it could be chased and chased and chased, until for some reason or other the chicken all by itself, as is said there, ‘went on strike’ and declined to breathe the air any longer.
42.925	“And in the event that the chicken resisted the infection of hypocrisy, in spite of its having existed among your favorites, and indeed did cease to wish to breathe the air any longer, then for this eventuality, as I afterwards learned, a common custom was established there among the beings of that group called Germany.
42.926	“Namely, when the chicken went on strike, its owners would very solemnly roast it in the oven, and for this solemn occasion would unfailingly invite all their relatives to dinner.
42.926	“It is interesting to notice also, that another professor of theirs, also famous, named Steiner, in the course of his what are called ‘scientific investigations of supernatural phenomena,’ mathematically established that on the occasions when these chickens were served at these ‘invitation dinners,’ always their owners would recite the same thing.
42.926	“Namely, every hostess, rolling her eyes to heaven and pointing to the chicken, would say with great feeling that it was the ‘famous Pamir pheasant’ and that it had been specially sent to them from Pamir by their dear nephew who resided there as consul for their great ‘fatherland.’
42.926	“On that planet there exist in general conjuries for every possible kind of purpose.
42.926	“These conjuries began multiplying particularly after many of the beings of this peculiar planet had become specialists in supernatural phenomena and came to be called ‘occultists,’ ‘spiritualists,’ ‘theosophists,’ ‘violet magicians,’ ‘chiromants,’ and so forth.
42.926	“Besides being able to create ‘supernatural phenomena,’ these ‘specialists’ also knew very well how to make the opaque look transparent.
42.926	“This same American prohibition of the consumption of alcohol can serve us yet again as an excellently illuminating example for understanding to what degree the possibilities for the crystallization of data for being-reflection are atrophied in these contemporary responsible power-possessing beings, in respect of the fact that such an absurdity is being actually repeated there.
42.926	“There on that continent, everybody without exception, thanks to this prohibition, now consumes this same alcohol—even those who in other circumstances would probably never have consumed it.
42.926	“There on the continent America, the very same is occurring with the consumption of alcohol as occurred with the chewing of the seeds of the poppy by the beings of the country Maralpleicie.
42.926-7	“The difference is that in the country of Maralpleicie the beings were then addicted to the use of at least genuine poppy seeds, whereas in America the beings now consume any liquid that comes their way, provided only that it bears the name of some alcoholic liquid existing somewhere on their planet.
42.927	“And another difference is, that in respect of concealing their consumption of the prohibited product from government eyes, the contemporary beings now breeding on the continent America are not by any means so naïve as were the beings of the Maralpleicie epoch.
42.927	“To what lengths your contemporary favorites have gone in this respect, you can understand very well from the following examples.
42.927	“At the present time there in that place, every young man with his ‘mother’s milk’ scarcely dry on his lips, infallibly carries with him what seems to be a perfectly ordinary harmless cigarette case or cigar case; and, sitting in a restaurant or in one of their famous dance halls, he casually produces this cigarette case or cigar case from his pocket and everybody around imagines of course that he is about to smoke.
42.927	“But not a bit of it! He just gives a peculiar little twist to this cigarette case or cigar case of his, when, presto, a diminutive tumbler appears in his left hand, whereupon with his right hand he s-l-o-w-l-y and q-u-i-e-t-l-y pours out for himself from this cigarette case or cigar case into this diminutive tumbler of his some kind of liquid—probably Scotch whisky, but concocted as I have already told you, on some barge off the American coast.
42.927	“During my observations there at that time, I once witnessed still another picture.
42.927	“In one of the said restaurants sat two young American women not far from my table.
42.927	“An attendant of this restaurant, or, as they say, a ‘waiter,’ served them with a bottle of some mineral water and a couple of glasses.
42.927-8	“One of the women gave a certain little twist to the handle of her fashionable umbrella, whereupon a liquid, obviously also Scotch whisky or something of the kind, began likewise to flow very q-u-i-e-t-l-y and very s-l-o-w-l-y from the handle into their glasses.
42.928	“In short, my boy, the same is being repeated on this continent America as also took place quite recently in the large community called Russia. There the power-possessing responsible beings also prohibited the consumption of the famous ‘Russian vodka with the consequence that these beings very soon adapted themselves to consume, instead of this ‘vodka,’ the no less famous ‘Hanja,’ from the effects of which thousands of these unfortunate beings are still dying there daily.
42.928	“But in the present case, we must certainly give the contemporary American beings their due. In their skill at concealing their consumption of this famous alcohol from the authorities, they are infinitely more ‘civilized’ than the beings of the community Russia.
42.928	“Well then, my boy, to avoid the bustle of the street, I entered a typical New York restaurant, and having taken a seat at one of the tables there, began gazing out of the window at the crowd.
42.928	“As it is the common custom there on your planet, when people sit in a restaurant or any other such public place, always and without fail to pay what they call ‘money’ for something for the profit of the proprietor of the establishment, I did the same and also ordered for myself a glass of their famous what is called ‘orangeade.’
42.928	“This famous American drink consists of the juice squeezed from oranges or from the famous what is called there ‘grapefruit,’ and the beings of that continent drink it always and everywhere in incredible quantities.
42.928-9	“It must be admitted that this famous orangeade of theirs does occasionally refresh them in hot weather, but, on the other hand, in its action upon what are called the ‘mucous membranes’ of the stomach and intestines this drink of theirs is still another of the many factors there, which, taken together, are gradually bringing about—although slowly yet inexorably certainly—the destruction of that ‘unnecessary’ and ‘negligible’ function called the ‘digestive function of the stomach.’
42.929	“Well then, sitting in the said restaurant with this famous orangeade and watching the passers-by in the hope of seeing among them the Mister I awaited, I began casually looking around at the objects in the restaurant also.
42.929	“On the table at which I was sitting, I saw among other things also what is called the ‘menu’ of the restaurant.
42.929	“‘Menu,’ there on your planet, is the name given to a sheet of paper on which are written the names of all the varieties of food and drink available in the said restaurant.
42.929	“Reading the contents of this paper, I found among other things that no fewer than seventy-eight different dishes could be ordered there that day.
42.929	“This staggered me, and I wondered what on earth kind of a stove these Americans must have in their kitchens to be able to prepare seventy-eight dishes on it for just one day.
42.929	“I ought to add that I had been on every one of the continents there and had been the guest of a great many beings of different castes. “And I had seen food prepared innumerable times, and also in my own house. So I already more or less knew that to prepare a single dish, at least two or three saucepans were required; and I reckoned that as these Americans prepared seventy-eight dishes in one kitchen they would certainly need about three hundred pots and pans.
42.929-30	“I had the fancy to see for myself how it was possible to accommodate on one stove three hundred saucepans, so I decided to offer what is called there a ‘good tip’ to the waiter who served me with the orangeade, to let me see the kitchen of the restaurant with my own eyes.
42.930	“The waiter somehow arranged it, and I went into the kitchen.
42.930	“When I got there, what do you think?… What kind of picture did I see?… A stove with a hundred pots and pans?
42.930	“Not on your life!!…
42.930	“I saw there only a small what is called there ‘midget gas stove,’ such as what are called ‘old bachelors’ and ‘man-haters,’ that is to say, ‘worthless spinsters,’ usually have in their rooms.
42.930	“By the side of this ‘pimple of a stove’ sat an extremely fat-necked cook of ‘Scotch origin’ reading the newspaper inseparable from every American; he was reading, it seems, the newspaper The Times.
42.930	“I looked around in amazement and also at the neck of this cook.
42.930	“While I was thus looking round in astonishment, a waiter came into the kitchen from the restaurant and, in peculiar English, ordered a certain very elaborate dish from this fat-necked cook.
42.930	“I think I may as well tell you that I then also noticed from his accent that the waiter who ordered this dish with a fancy name had only recently arrived there from the continent of Europe, obviously with the dream of filling his pockets there with American dollars—with that dream in fact about these American dollars which indeed every European has who has never been to America and which now allows no one in Europe to sleep in peace.
42.930	“When this aspirant to an ‘American multimillionairedom’ had ordered the said fancy dish from the fat-necked cook, the latter got up from his place without haste and very heavily, and first of all took down from the wall a small what is called there ‘bachelor’s frying pan.’
42.931	“Then having lighted his ‘dwarf stove’ he put the frying pan on it; and still moving ponderously, he then went over to one of the many cupboards, took from it a tin of some canned food, opened it, and emptied its contents into the said frying pan.
42.931	“Then in the same way he went over to another cupboard and again took out a tin of some canned food, but this time he put only a little of the contents into the frying pan and, having stirred the resulting mixture, he put the whole lot with precision on a plate which he set on the table and again sat down in his former place and resumed the interrupted reading of his newspaper.
42.931	“The waiter who had ordered this ‘fancy dish’ soon returned to the kitchen bearing a very large what is called ‘copper’ tray on which were a vast quantity of hollow metal what is called fashionable cutlery and, having placed the dish with this strange food on the said tray, he carried the whole into the restaurant.
42.931	“When I returned and resumed my seat at my table, I saw that at another table quite near, a Mister was sitting who was smacking his lips while eating the dish which I had chanced to see prepared in the kitchen.
42.931	“Looking again out of the window into the street, I eventually discerned the Mister I expected in the crowd, so, settling my bill at once, I left the restaurant.
42.931	“And now, my boy, maintaining the form of mentation of our dear teacher, I might as well tell you also a little about the ‘speech’ of these American beings.
42.931	“You must know that before my arrival on that continent I could already speak the ‘tongue’ of the beings of that continent, namely, what is called the ‘English tongue.’
42.931-2	“But from the very first day of my arrival in the capital of this North America, I already experienced great inconvenience in my ‘verbal intercourse’ because, as it turned out, although these beings use this English tongue for verbal intercourse among themselves, this English tongue of theirs is rather special and in fact quite peculiar.
42.932	“So, having felt the inconvenience, I made up my mind to learn this peculiar ‘conversational English’ of theirs also.
42.932	“On the third day after my arrival there, as I was on my way to my newly acquainted Mister specially to ask him to recommend me a teacher for this ‘English tongue,’ I suddenly saw reflected on the sky, by projectors, an ‘American advertisement’ with the words:
42.932	‘SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES BY THE SYSTEM OF MR. CHATTERLITZ 13 North 293rd Street’
42.932	“The languages and the times when they were taught were set forth and, of the ‘American English language’ in particular, it was stated, among other things, that it could be learned in from five minutes to twenty-four hours.
42.932	“At first I could not make head or tail of it, but I decided all the same to go the next morning to the address indicated.
42.932	“When the next day I found this Mr. Chatterlitz, he received me himself in person, and when he heard that I wished to learn the ‘American English language’ by his system, he explained to me first of all that this conversational language could be learned by his system in three forms, each form corresponding to some special requirement.
42.932	“‘The first form,’ he said, ‘is the conversational language for a man who is obliged to earn here among us our American dollars.
42.932-3	“‘The second form is required for a man who, although not in need of our dollars, nevertheless likes to do dollar business and, furthermore, in order that in his social relations with our Americans everybody will think that he is not “just a nobody” but a real “gentleman” with an English upbringing.
42.933	“‘As for the third form of the English language, this form is required by anybody who wishes to be able to procure here, there, and everywhere and at any hour—Scotch whisky.’
42.933	“As the time for learning the second form of the English language by this system suited me best, I decided to pay him immediately the dollars he charged in order to know the secret of his system.
42.933	“When I had paid him the dollars he charged and he had, seemingly quite casually, but in reality not without that avidity which has also already become proper to all the beings of your planet, placed my dollars in an inside pocket, he explained to me that in order to learn this second form, only five words had to be memorized, namely: 1. Maybe 2. Perhaps 3. Tomorrow 4. Oh, I see 5. All right
42.933	“He added that if I had occasion to converse with one or more of their misters, I should only need to utter any one of these five words every now and then.
42.933	“‘That will be quite enough,’ he added, ‘to convince everybody that in the first place you know the English language very well, and secondly that you are an old hand at doing dollar business.’
42.933	“Although the system of this highly esteemed Chatterlitz was very original and meritorious, yet I never had occasion to put it into practice.
42.933-4	“And the occasion did not arise, because the next day I met by chance in the street an old acquaintance, an, as he is called, ‘editor,’ from the continent of Europe who in conversation confided to me an even more ideal secret for the American language.
42.934	“When I told him, among other things, that I had been the day before to Mister Chatterlitz about the local language and had told him a little about the system, he replied:
42.934	“‘Do you know what, my dear doctor? As you are a subscriber to our paper over there, I cannot help revealing to you a certain secret of the language here.’
42.934	“And he said further:
42.934	“‘Knowing several of our European languages, you can by employing this secret of mine be master of the language here to perfection, and indeed converse about anything you wish, and not simply make others think that you know the English language—for which purpose, I do not deny, the system of this Chatterlitz is indeed excellent.’
42.934	“He explained further that if, when pronouncing any word taken from any European language, you imagine that you have a hot potato in your mouth, then some word of the English language is in general bound to result.
42.934	“And if you imagine that this same hot potato is furthermore well sprinkled with ground ‘red pepper,’ then you will already have the pronunciation of the local American English language to a tee.
42.934	“He advised me moreover not to be timid in choosing words from the European languages, since the English language in general consisted of a fortuitous concourse of almost all the European languages, and hence that the language contained several words for every ordinary idea, with the consequence that ‘you almost always hit on the right word.’
42.934-5	“‘And suppose that, without knowing it, you use a word entirely absent from this language, no great harm is done; at worst your hearer will only think that he himself is ignorant of it.
42.935	“‘All you have to do is just to bear in mind the said hot potato and… no more “boloney” about it.
42.935	“‘I guarantee this secret, and I can safely say that if, on exactly following my advice, your “language” here does not prove to be ideal, then you may stop your subscription.’
42.935	“Several days later, I had to go to the city of Chicago.
42.935	“This city is the second in size on that continent and is, as it were, a second capital of ‘North America.’
42.935	“On seeing me off for Chicago, that Mister, my New York acquaintance, gave me a letter of introduction to a certain Mister there.
42.935	“As soon as I arrived in this city Chicago, I went straight to this said Mister.
42.935	“This Chicago Mister turned out to be very amiable and most obliging.
42.935	“His name was ‘Mister Bellybutton.’
42.935	“For the evening of the first day, this amiable and obliging Mr. Bellybutton suggested my accompanying him to the house of some of his friends so that, as he expressed it, I should ‘not be bored’ in a quite strange city.
42.935	“I, of course, agreed.
42.935	“When we arrived, we found there a fair number of young American beings, guests like ourselves.
42.935	“All the guests were exceedingly gay and very ‘merry.’
42.935	“They were telling ‘funny stories’ in turn and the laughter from these stories of theirs lingered in the room like the smoke on a day when the wind is south over the chimneys of the American factories where the American sausages called ‘hot dogs’ are prepared.
42.935	“As I also find funny stories amusing, that first evening of mine in the city of Chicago passed very gaily indeed.
42.935-6	“All this would have been quite sensible and very delightful, if it had not been for one ‘feature’ of the stories told that first evening, which greatly astonished and perplexed me.
42.936	“And that is, I was astonished by their what is called ‘ambiguity’ and ‘obscenity.’
42.936	“The ambiguity and obscenity of these stories were such that any single one of these American storytellers could have given a dozen points to ‘Boccaccio,’ famous there on the planet Earth.
42.936	“Boccaccio is the name of a certain writer who wrote for the beings of the Earth a very instructive book called the Decameron; it is very widely read there at the present time and is the favorite of contemporary beings breeding there on all continents and belonging to almost all communities there.
42.936	“The following day, also in the evening, this kind Mr. Bellybutton took me again to some still other friends of his.
42.936	“Here also were a large number of young American beings, both male and female, sitting in various corners of a very large room conversing quietly and very placidly.
42.936	“When we were seated, a pretty young American girl soon came and sat down beside me, and began chatting with me.
42.936	“As is usual there, I took up the conversation, and we chatted about anything and everything, she asking me among other things many questions about the city of Paris.
42.936	“In the midst of the conversation, this American as they say ‘young lady’ suddenly, for no earthly reason at all, began stroking my neck.
42.936	“I immediately thought, How kind of her! She must certainly have noticed a ‘flea’ on my neck and is now stroking the place to allay the irritation.
42.936-7	“But when I soon noticed that all the young American beings present were also stroking each other, I was much astonished and could not understand what it was all about.
42.937	“My first supposition concerning the ‘fleas’ no longer held good because it was impossible to suppose that everybody had a flea on his neck.
42.937	“I began speculating what it was all about, but try as I might, I could give myself no explanation whatever.
42.937	“Only afterwards, when we had left the house and were in the street, I asked Mr. Bellybutton for an explanation of it all. He immediately burst into unrestrained laughter and called me ‘simpleton’ and a ‘hick.’ Then, calming down a bit, he said:
42.937	“‘What a queer guy you are; why, we have just been to a “petting party.”’ And still laughing at my naïvete, he explained that the day before we had also been to a party, but to a ‘story party,’ and tomorrow, he continued, ‘I was planning to take you to a “swimming party” where young people bathe together but of course all dressed in special costumes.’
42.937	“When he saw that the same look of perplexed astonishment still remained on my face, he asked, ‘But if for some reason or other you don’t like such “tame affairs,” we can go to others that are not open to everybody. There are lots of such “parties” here and I am a member of several of them. “‘At these parties which are not open to everybody, we can, if you like, have something more “substantial.”’
42.937	“But I did not take advantage of this kindness of this obliging and exceedingly ‘amiable’ Mr. Bellybutton, because the next morning I received a telegram which made it necessary for me to return to New York.”
42.937	At this point of his tales Beelzebub suddenly became thoughtful and, after a rather protracted pause, sighing deeply, he continued to speak thus:
42.937-8	“The next day I did not go by the morning train as I had decided on receiving the telegram, but delayed my departure until the night train.
42.938	“As the cause of the delay of my departure may well illustrate for you the evil resulting from a certain invention of these American beings which is very widely spread over the whole of your planet, and which is one of the chief causes of the continued, so to say ‘dwindling of the psyche’ of all the other three-brained beings of your unfortunate planet, I shall tell you about it a little more in detail.
42.938	“Just this maleficent invention of the beings of this continent, which I now intend to explain to you, has not only been the cause of the acceleration of the tempo of the still greater ‘dwindling’ of the psyche of all the three-brained beings breeding on that unfortunate planet of yours, but it was and still is the cause also that in the beings of all the other continents of recent times there is already completely destroyed that being-function which it is proper for all three-brained beings to have, and which was the one single function which even until the last century arose in their presence of its own accord, namely, that being-function which is everywhere called the ‘sane instinct to believe in reality.’
42.938	“In the place of this function, very necessary for every three-brained being, another special very definite function gradually crystallized, whose action induces in its bearer a continuous doubt about everything.
42.938	“This maleficent invention of theirs they call ‘advertising.’
42.938-9	“Better to understand what follows, I must first tell you that several years before this trip of mine to America, once when traveling on the continent of Europe, I bought myself some books to read in the train to pass away the prospective long and tedious railway journey. In one of these books, written by a very famous writer there, I read an article about this America in which a great deal was said about what is called ‘the slaughterhouses’ existing in that same city Chicago.
42.939	“Slaughterhouse is the name there for a special place where three-brained terrestrial beings carry on the destruction of the existence of those beings of various other forms whose planetary bodies they are addicted to using for their first being-food, again owing to those abnormally established conditions of ordinary being-existence.
42.939	“Moreover, executing this manifestation of theirs in these special establishments, they even say and imagine that they do it from necessity and, as it were, in a perfectly what they call ‘humane way.’
42.939	“This said terrestrial contemporary very famous writer, the author of this book, rapturously described, as an ‘eyewitness,’ a, in his opinion, superlatively well-organized slaughterhouse of this same city Chicago.
42.939	“He described the perfection of its machines of every possible kind and its marvelous cleanliness. Not only, he wrote, does humaneness to the beings of other forms reach in this slaughterhouse the degree of ‘divinity,’ but even the machines are so perfected that it is almost as if a live ox is driven through a door at one end and some ten minutes later out of a door at the other end you could get, if you wished, hot sausages ready to eat. Finally, he specially emphasized that it was all done entirely by the ‘perfected’ machines alone, without the touch of a human hand, as a consequence of which, as he said, everything was so clean and neat there that nothing could possibly be imagined cleaner and neater.
42.939	“Several years after reading that book, I chanced to read again almost the same thing about this Chicago slaughterhouse in a certain also serious Russian magazine, in which this slaughterhouse was lauded in the same way.
42.939-40	“And thereafter, I heard of this Chicago slaughterhouse from a thousand different beings, many of whom had been, presumably, eyewitnesses to the marvels they described.
42.940	“In short, before my arrival in the city of Chicago, I was already fully convinced that a ‘marvel’ unprecedented on the Earth existed there.
42.940	“I must mention here that I had always been greatly interested in these establishments of theirs, namely, those places where your favorites destroy the existence of various forms of terrestrial beings; and furthermore, from the time when I began organizing my observatory on the planet Mars and had to do with various machines for it, I took always and everywhere a great interest in every other sort of machine as well.
42.940	“So, when I happened to be in this same city of Chicago, I thought it would be inexcusable on my part not to use the opportunity to see this famous ‘Chicago slaughterhouse.’ So, in the morning on the day of my departure from there, I decided to go, accompanied by one of my new Chicago acquaintances, to inspect this rare construction of your favorites.
42.940	“Having arrived there, we took as our guide, on the advice of one of the assistants of the chief director, an employee of a branch of some bank there which was connected with this slaughterhouse, and together with him we set off to inspect the place.
42.940	“Accompanied by him, we first of all went through the places where the unfortunate quadruped beings are driven and where they remain until their slaughter. “This place was in no way different from that of all establishments of the kind on your planet, except that this particular place was on a considerably larger scale. On the other hand, it was very much dirtier than any of the slaughterhouses I had previously seen in other countries.
42.940-1	“Afterwards we went through several more what are called ‘annexes.’ One of them was the ‘cold storage’ for the meat that was ready; in another they destroyed the existence of quadruped beings simply with hammers and also stripped off their hide—again in the manner usual in other slaughterhouses.
42.941	“By the way, in passing through this last annex I remember I then thought: this place here is in all probability for the slaughter of cattle intended especially for the Jews, who, as I already knew, in accordance with the code of their religion, destroy quadruped beings in a special way.
42.941	“Walking through the said annexes took rather a long time, and all the while I was waiting for the moment when we should eventually arrive at the section about which I had heard so much and which I was determined to see without fail.
42.941	“But when I expressed my wish to our guide to hasten on to that section, I learned that we had already seen everything there was to see in this famous Chicago slaughterhouse, and that no other sections existed. I had not, my dear boy, seen there anywhere a single machine, unless one includes the rollers on rails which are in all slaughterhouses for moving the heavy carcasses; and as for the dirt in this Chicago slaughterhouse, you could see as much as you liked.
42.941	“In cleanliness and general organization, the slaughterhouse of the city Tiflis, which I had seen two years before, could have given many points to this slaughterhouse of the city Chicago.
42.941	“In the Tiflis slaughterhouse, for example, you would not find anywhere on the floor a single drop of blood, whereas, in the Chicago slaughterhouse, everywhere, at every step, there were pools of it.
42.941-2	“Obviously some company of American businessmen, inevitably resorting to ‘advertising’ for every business in general, had to advertise the Chicago slaughterhouse also, in order to spread a false notion about it, totally unrelated to reality, over the whole planet.
42.942	“As is in general the rule there, they certainly did not spare their dollars in this case either, and since the sacred being-function of ‘conscience’ is completely atrophied among contemporary terrestrial what are called ‘journalists’ and ‘reporters,’ the result is that in all your favorites breeding on all the continents there is crystallized just that definite, monstrously exaggerated notion of the slaughterhouses of the city of Chicago.
42.942	“And it can be said, indeed, that they did so in true American fashion.
42.942	“On the continent America, the three-brained beings have become so expert in this advertising of theirs, that it is quite possible to apply to them the saying of our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin which declares that ‘that man will become a friend of the cloven-hoofed who perfects himself to such Reason and such being that he can make an elephant out of a fly.’
42.942	“They have indeed become so skillful at ‘making elephants out of flies’ and they do it so often that already at the present time, on seeing a genuine American elephant, one has to ‘remember oneself with the whole of one’s being’ not to get the impression that it is only a fly.
42.942-3	“From Chicago I returned again to New York and, as all my projects for the fulfillment of which I had come to this continent were then unexpectedly rapidly and rather successfully actualized, and seeing that the surrounding circumstances and conditions of the ordinary existence of the three-brained beings of that city turned out to be corresponding to what was required for my periodic complete rest which had already become customary for me during my last personal sojourn on the surface of your planet, I decided to stay there longer and exist with the beings there merely according to the being-associations inevitably flowing in me.
42.943	“Existing in the said way in this central point of the beings of this big contemporary group and rubbing shoulders on various occasions with the various types among them, I just then—without any premeditation but thanks only to my acquired habit of collating material, so to say ‘by the way,’ for those statistics of mine, which, as I have already told you, I gathered during the whole of my last personal sojourn among your favorites for the purpose chiefly of comparing the extent to which all the illnesses and all the strange what are called ‘being subjective vices’ existing among the beings of the different groups are spread—constated a fact which greatly interested me, namely, the fact that in the common presences of almost half of all the three-brained beings I met there, the proceeding functioning of the transformation of the first being-food is disharmonized, that is, as they themselves would say, their digestive organs are spoiled; and that almost a quarter of them have or are candidates for that form of disease specific to beings there, which they call ‘impotence,’ thanks just to which disease a great many of the contemporary beings of your planet are forever deprived of the possibility of continuing their species.
42.943-4	“When I chanced to constate this, a great interest in the beings of just this new group arose in me, and I thereupon changed my previously determined mode of existence among them and allotted half my time from my personal rest to special observation and investigation of the causes of this fact—for me so strange and for them so deplorable. In pursuit of this aim I even took occasion to visit various other provincial points of the beings of this new contemporary group, though I stayed nowhere more than one or two days with the exception of the city ‘Boston,’ or, as it is sometimes called, ‘the city of the people who escaped race degeneration.’ There I existed for a whole week.
42.944	“And so, as a result of these observations and statistical investigations of mine, it became clear that both these aforesaid diseases, which to a certain extent are prevalent among the contemporary beings in general who breed on all continents, are on this continent so inordinately widespread that its proximate consequences were immediately patent to me, namely, that if it continues among them at the present rate, then just the same fate will befall this contemporary large independent group of three-brained beings who have taken your fancy as recently befell that large community there which was called ‘monarchic Russia,’ that is to say, this group also will be destroyed.
42.944	“The difference will be only in the process of the destruction itself. The process of the destruction of the large community ‘monarchic Russia proceeded in consequence of the abnormalities of, so to say, the Reason of the power-possessing beings there, whereas the process of the destruction of this community America will proceed in consequence of organic abnormalities. In other words, the ‘death’ of the first community came from, as they say, the ‘mind’ whereas the death of the second community will come from the ‘stomach and sex’ of its beings.
42.944	“The point is, that it has long ago been determined that in general the possibility of long existence for a three-brained being of your planet depends at the present time exclusively only on the normal action of these two aforementioned being-functions, namely, upon the state of their as they say ‘digestion’ and upon the functioning of their ‘sex organs.’
42.944-5	“But it is precisely these two functionings necessary to their common presence, which are now both going in the direction of complete atrophy; and moreover, at a highly accelerated tempo.
42.945	“This community America is at the present time still quite young; it is still, as they say there on your planet, like an infant, all ‘peaches and cream.’
42.945	“And so, if while still so young its beings have in respect of the two chief motors of their existence thus deviated retrogressively, then, in my opinion, in this case also—as it in general occurs to everything in the Megalocosmos—the degree of the further movement for the purpose of blending again with the Infinite will depend on the direction and degree of the forces obtained from the initial impetus.
42.945	“In our Great Megalocosmos, there is even established for all beings with Reason a law, as it were, according to which one must always and in everything guard just against the initial impetus, because on acquiring momentum, it becomes a force which is the fundamental mover of everything existing in the Universe, and which leads everything back to Prime Being.”
42.945	In this place of his tales Beelzebub was handed a ‘Leitoochanbros,’ and when he had finished listening to the contents of the communication he turned again to Hassein and said:
42.945	“I think, my boy, that it will be very useful to you for your more detailed representation and understanding of the strangeness of the psyche in general of these three-brained beings who have taken your fancy and who arise on the planet Earth if I explain to you in somewhat greater detail the causes which, in the common presences of these American three-brained beings, produce disharmony in both of these fundamental functionings of theirs.
42.945-6	“For convenience of exposition I shall explain to you separately the causes of the disharmony of each of these two fundamental functionings, and I shall begin with the explanation of the causes of the disharmony in the functioning of the transformation of their first being-food, or as they themselves would say, with the causes of the spoiling of their stomachs.
42.946	“For the disharmony of this function of theirs, there were and now still are several definite causes, comprehensible even to the Reason of ordinary normal three-brained beings, but the chief and fundamental cause is that from the very beginning of the formation of their community, they gradually got accustomed—owing to all kinds of established surrounding conditions and influences proceeding from authority which happened to be formed of itself abnormally—and they are now already thoroughly accustomed, never to use for their first being-food anything fresh whatsoever, but to use exclusively only products already decomposed.
42.946	“At the present time the beings of this group almost never consume for their first being-food any edible product which still retains all those active elements put into every being by Great Nature Herself as an indispensable requisite for taking in power for normal existence; but they ‘preserve,’ ‘freeze,’ and ‘essensify’ beforehand all those products of theirs and use them only when most of these active elements required for normal existence are already volatilized out of them.
42.946-7	“And this abnormality proceeded in the ordinary process of being-existence of the three-brained beings who have taken your fancy—in this instance, in the case of this new group—and continues to be spread and to be fixed everywhere there, also of course in consequence of the fact that, subsequent to the time, when they—that is to say, when all the three-brained beings in general of that planet of yours—had ceased to actualize in themselves the indispensable being-efforts, there was then gradually destroyed in them the possibility for the crystallization in their common presences of those being-data thanks to which, even in the absence of the guidance of true knowledge, the maleficence for themselves of any of their manifestations can be sensed instinctively.
42.947	“In the present case, if only a few of these unfortunates possessed this instinct proper to three-brained beings, they might then—if only thanks merely to habitual accidental being-associations and confrontations—first, themselves become aware, and afterwards inform all the rest, that as soon as the prime connection with common Nature of any product in general serviceable as a first being-food is severed, then no matter if this product be kept completely isolated, that is to say ‘hermetically sealed,’ ‘frozen,’ or ‘essensified,’ it must like everything else in the Universe change its form and decompose according to the same principle and in the same order in which it was formed.
42.947	“Here you should know concerning the active elements from which all cosmic formations are in general formed by Nature—both those subject to transformation through the Tetartocosmoses and which are the products for the first food of beings as well as in general all other completely spiritualized and half-spiritualized arisings—that, as soon as the corresponding time arrives, these active elements, in whatever conditions they may be founds obligatorily begin separating in a certain order of succession from those masses in which they were fused during the Trogoautoegocratic process.
42.947	“And the same, of course, proceeds with those products, so dear to the American beings, which they preserve in what are called ‘hermetically sealed cans.’
42.947-8	“However ‘hermetically’ these cans of products may be sealed, as soon as the time of, so to say, ‘disintegration’ arrives, the corresponding active elements infallibly begin to separate from the whole mass. And these active elements, thus separated from the whole mass, group themselves as a rule according to their origin in these hermetically sealed cans in the form of ‘drops’ or small ‘bubbles’ which, so to say, dissolve immediately the cans are opened for the consumption of these products, and, volatilizing into space, are dispersed to their corresponding places.
42.948	“The beings of this continent do sometimes consume fresh fruit; but as for these fruits of theirs—they cannot be said to be fruits, but simply and solely as our dear teacher would say, ‘freaks.’
42.948	“By means of the trees, existing in abundance on this continent, little by little various scientists of ‘new format’ have succeeded with their ‘wiseacrings’ in making of these American fruits at the present time, just, so to say, a ‘feast for the eye,’ and not a form of being-nourishment.
42.948	“The fruits there are now already so formed as to have within them scarcely anything of what was foreordained by Great Nature to be consumed for the normal being-existence of beings.
42.948	“These scientists of new format there are of course very far from apprehending that when any surplanetary formation is artificially grafted or manipulated in any such fashion it arrives in a state defined by objective science as ‘Absoizomosa,’ in which it absorbs from its surrounding medium cosmic substances serviceable only for the coating of what is called its ‘automatically self-reproducing subjective presence.’
42.948-9	“The point is, that from the very beginning of this latest contemporary civilization of theirs, it somehow so fell out among the beings of all the innumerable separate groups there, that, of the seven aspects of the fundamental commandment given to three-brained beings from Above, namely, ‘strive to acquire inner and outer purity,’ the single aspect they selected and in a distorted form have made their ideal, is that aspect which is conveyed in the following words: “‘Help everything around you, both the animate and the still inanimate, to acquire a beautiful appearance.’
42.949	“And indeed, and especially in the last two centuries there, they have striven simply to attain a ‘beautiful exterior’—but, of course, only in regard to those various objects external to them themselves, which chanced in the given period to become as they expressed it ‘fashionable.’
42.949	“During this said period, it has been of no concern to them whether any object external to them themselves had any substance whatsoever—all that was necessary was that it should have what they call ‘a striking appearance.’
42.949	“As regards the achievements of the contemporary beings of this continent in respect of actualizing the ‘external beauty’ of these fruits of theirs, then indeed, my boy, I have nowhere seen, not only on the other continents of the same planet but even on the other planets of that solar system, fruits so beautiful in appearance as those of the present time on this continent America; on the other hand, as regards the inner substance of these fruits, one can only use that favorite expression of our dear Teacher, which consists of the following words: “‘The greatest of all being-blessings for man is the action of castor oil.’
42.949	“And to what height they have carried their skill in making their famous preserves out of these fruits—as for this, as is said, ‘neither tongue can tell nor pen describe.’ You have to see them for yourself to experience in your common presence the degree of the impulse of ‘rapture’ to which one can be carried on perceiving with the organ of sight the external beauty of these American fruit preserves.
42.949-50	“Walking down the main streets of the cities of the beings of this continent, especially of the city New York, and seeing the display in any fruit store, it is hard to say at once just what it is the eyes behold. Is it an exhibition of pictures by the futurists of the city Berlin of the continent Europe, or is it a display of the famous perfumery stores for foreigners of the ‘world capital,’ that is, the city Paris?
42.950	“Only after a while, when you have finally managed to take in various details of the appearance of these displays and somehow start reflecting again, can you clearly constate how much greater is the variety of color and shape of the jars in these American displays of fruit preserves than in the mentioned displays of the continent of Europe; and this is evidently due to the fact that, in the common psyche of the beings of this new group, the combination resulting from the intermixture of former independent races happens to correspond more completely to a better perception and a thorough cognition of the sense and beneficence of the achievements of the Reason both of the beings of the contemporary community of Germany in respect of the chemical substances they have invented, called there ‘aniline’ and ‘alisarine,’ as well as of the beings of the community France in respect of ‘perfumery.’
42.950	“I myself when I first saw there such an exhibition could not refrain from entering one of these stores and buying about forty jars of all shapes containing fruit preserves of every shade of color.
42.950-1	“I bought them to please the beings then accompanying me, and who came from the continents of Asia and Europe where fruits so rarely beautiful to look at did not as yet exist. When I brought my purchases home and distributed them these beings were at first, indeed, not a whit less astonished and delighted than I had been by their appearance, but, afterwards, when they had consumed them for their first being-food, all that was needed was to see their grimaces and the change of color on their faces to understand what effect these fruits in general have upon the organism of beings.
42.951	“The case is still worse on that continent with that product which, for them as well as for almost all the three-brained beings of the Universe, is the most important product for first being-food, and, namely, that product called ‘prosphora,’ which they themselves name ‘bread.’
42.951	“Before I describe the fate of this American bread I must tell you that this terra firma part of the surface of your planet called ‘North and South America’ was formed thanks to various accidental combinations ensuing, in the first place, from the second great ‘cataclysm not according to law’ which occurred to that ill-fated planet and, secondly, from the position that terra firma occupies in relation to the process of the ‘common systematic movement’ having a stratum of what is called ‘soil’ which was and still is suited for the production of that ‘divine grain’ of which this same ‘prosphora’ is made. With conscious knowledge of how to use it, the soil surface of these continents is capable of yielding in a single what is called ‘good season’ the ‘fullness of a complete process of the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh,’ or in other words, a ‘forty-nine-fold harvest,’ and even by its semiconscious use, as is now the case, the soil there yields of this ‘divine grain’ a considerable abundance in comparison with the other continents.
42.951-2	“Well then, my boy, when the beings of that continent began to have, thanks to various fortuitous circumstances, many of those objects which, for this strange psyche of the contemporary three-brained beings who have taken your fancy, are a subject for their dreams and are everywhere called there ‘dollars,’ thanks to which fact, according to long established usage there, they acquired in their ‘picturings’ of the beings of all the other continents, what is called a ‘sense of superiority,’ with the result, also now usual among them, that they began to wiseacre with everything to achieve that said contemporary ideal of theirs, then they also began wiseacring with all their might with this divine grain out of which prosphora is made.
42.952	“They began employing every possible means to, so to say, deform this divine grain in order to give to its product a ‘beautiful and striking appearance.’
42.952	“For this purpose they invented a variety of machines by means of which they ‘scrape,’ ‘comb,’ ‘smooth,’ and ‘polish’ this wheat, which has the misfortune to arise on their continent, until they accomplish the complete destruction of all those active elements concentrated on the surface of the grains just underneath what is called the ‘husk’ and precisely which are appointed by Great Nature for renewing in the common presences of beings what they have expended in worthily serving her.
42.952	“Hence, it is, my boy, that the prosphora or bread now produced there from this wheat which arises in such abundance on this continent contains nothing useful to the beings who consume it, and from its consumption there is produced in their presences nothing but noxious gases and what are called there ‘worms.’
42.952	“However, it must in all fairness be remarked that if they got for themselves from this wheat nothing that enables them to serve Great Nature better or more consciously, nevertheless, by producing in themselves the said ‘worms,’ they do unconsciously very very greatly assist their planet in honorable service to the Most Great common-cosmic Trogoautoegocrat—for are not these worms also beings through whom cosmic substances are also transformed?
42.952-3	“At any rate, the beings breeding on this continent have already achieved by these wiseacrings of theirs with this bread what they have greatly desired and striven to obtain, and, namely, that the beings of all the other continents should never fail to say of them, as, for instance, in the given case, something as follows:
42.953	“‘Astonishingly smart fellows, these Americans; even their bread is something extraordinary; so “superb,” so “white” and simply charming—really the splendor of splendors of contemporary civilization.’
42.953	“But that from this deformity of wheat, their bread results in being ‘worthless’ and, furthermore, constitutes another of the innumerable factors in the spoiling of their stomachs—what is that to them? Are they not also in the front rank of contemporary what is called ‘European civilization’?
42.953	“The most curious thing in all this naïvete of theirs is that they give the best and most useful of what Nature forms in this divine grain for their normal existence, to the pigs, or simply burn it, while for themselves they consume that substance which is formed by Nature in the wheat only for connecting and maintaining those active elements which are localized chiefly, as I have already said, just under the husk of the grain.
42.953	“A second and also rather important factor in the disharmonizing of the digestive function of these unfortunate American three-brained beings is the system which they have recently invented for the elimination from themselves of the waste residue of their first-food; and that is to say, the ‘comfortable seats’ of what are called their ‘water closets.’
42.953-4	“In addition to the fact that this maleficent invention was and still is one of the chief factors in the said disharmonization now proceeding in them themselves and also in almost all the beings of the other continents—who, by the way, have already begun in recent times very jealously imitating them in all their peculiar methods of ‘assisting’ their transformatory functioning—your favorites, thanks to this invention of theirs, now striving to fulfill even this inevitable being-function of theirs with the greatest possible sensation of pleasant tranquillity, have got, as it were, a new incentive for the jealous service of their god ‘self-calming,’ which, as I have already said more than once, has been and still is for them almost the chief evil engendering and evoking all the abnormalities of their psyche as well as of their ordinary being-existence.
42.954	“A good example, and even, so to say, an ‘illuminatingly enlightening picture for your being-representation’ of what extraordinary perspectives are opened for the future by just this invention of theirs, is the fact that already certain of these contemporary American beings who have acquired, of course also by a variety of accidents, a quantity of their famous dollars now arrange in their ‘water closets with comfortable seats’ such accessories as a small table, a telephone and what is called a ‘radio apparatus,’ so that when so sitting, they may continue their ‘correspondence,’ discuss over the telephone with their acquaintances all their dollar businesses, quietly read the newspapers which have become indispensable to them, or, finally, listen to those musical compositions, the work of various Hasnamusses there which, because they are, as is said, ‘fashionable,’ every contemporary American businessman is also obliged to know.
42.954	“The main harm in the significance of the resulting disharmony in the digestive functioning of all the contemporary three-brained beings of your planet from this American invention is due to the following causes:
42.954-5	“In former times, when more or less normal data for the engendering of objective Reason were still crystallized in the common presences of your favorites, and they themselves could reflect and understand when other similar and already enlightened beings explained the subject to them, they made the said posture as was required; but subsequently, when the said being data had definitely ceased to crystallize in them, and they also began discharging this function of theirs only automatically, then, I thanks to the system prevalent before this American invention, the planetary body could of itself, automatically, by virtue only of what is called ‘animal instinct,’ adopt the required definite posture. But now that American beings have invented these ‘comfortable seats,’ and they have all begun using them for this inevitable function of theirs, their planetary body can no longer possibly adapt itself even instinctively to the required posture, with the consequence that not only have certain what are called ‘muscles’ which actualize this inevitable being-function become gradually atrophied in those of your favorites who use these American comfortable seats, owing to which what are called obstructions are formed in them, but in addition the causes are engendered of several specifically new diseases which, in the whole of our Great Universe, arise exclusively only in the presences of these strange three-brained beings.
42.955	“Among the various primary and secondary causes, the totality of which is gradually bringing about the disharmonization of this fundamental function in the common presences of your contemporary favorites breeding on that continent of North America, there is still another exceedingly peculiar cause which, although ‘blatantly obvious’ among them, nevertheless, owing to their ‘chicken reflections,’ flourishes with an impulse of egoistic satisfaction, under as it were a ‘cap of invisibility.’
42.955-6	“This peculiar cause arose and also began slowly and quietly, but infallibly disharmonizing this function in them, thanks simply to the fact that in the strange presences of the beings of this new large group, a ‘ruling passion’ prevails to be as often as possible on the continent of Europe.
42.956	“You should also be informed about this peculiar cause, chiefly because you will learn from it of yet another result, harmful for all your favorites, of the ‘evil wiseacrings’ of their contemporary ‘scientists.’
42.956	“For your better representation and understanding of this cause of the gradual disharmonizing of this inevitable being-function in the common presences of the American beings, you should first be familiar with a certain detail of just those organs which actualize the said function in their common presences.
42.956	“Among their organs for the complete transformation of the first food is one that exists almost everywhere under the name of ‘Toospooshokh,’ or, as they themselves call it, a ‘blind process,’ and in their scientific terminology, ‘appendix.’
42.956	“The action of this organ, as appointed by Great Nature, is that various connective cosmic substances separated by the transformation of the various surplanetary crystallizations which compose the ‘first being-food’ are gathered in it in the form of what are called ‘gases,’ in order that later, at the time of the elimination from the common presences of the beings of the already waste residue of the said food, these ‘gases’ should by their pressure assist this act.
42.956	“The gases gathered in this organ actualize by their so to say ‘discharge’ the mechanical action designed by Nature, independently of the general transformatory functioning proceeding in the beings, and only at definite periods of time established in each being differently according to subjective habit.
42.956-7	“Well then, my boy, thanks to their frequent trips to the continent Europe, the round trip taking from twelve days to a month, conditions are created for a daily change of time for the fulfillment of this established function, with the consequence that a serious factor results for the gradual engendering of disharmony in the process of their common fundamental transformatory functioning. That is to say, when for a period of many days, on account of the change of the established time, they fail to perform this indispensable function of theirs, and the ‘gases’ thus collected in this organ, not being utilized by them for the automatic action of the purpose indicated, and not fulfilling the design preconceived by Great Nature, gradually escaping from their presences unproductively into space—the totality of these manifestations of theirs, by the way, making existence on these passenger ships of theirs almost intolerable for a being with a normally developed organ for perceiving odors—then, as a result of all this, there often occurs in them what is called a ‘mechanical obstruction,’ which in its turn also conduces to the said gradual disharmonization of this fundamental transformatory function of theirs.
42.957	“When I began to explain to you, my boy, the causes of the disharmony in the presences of these American beings of the function of the transformation of the first being-food and when I mentioned the ‘comfortable seats’ invented by them, I said among other things, that these strange three-brained beings who have taken your fancy and who breed on the planet Earth were ‘again’ striving to perform even this indispensable being-function of theirs with the greatest possible sensation of self-satisfaction for themselves. I said ‘again’ because previously, in various periods of the flow of time, these strange three-brained beings there who have taken your fancy had already several times introduced something similar into the usages of their ordinary existence.
42.957-8	“I remember very clearly one of those periods when the beings of that time, who, by the way, according to the notions of your contemporary favorites, were nothing but ancient ‘savages,’ invented every possible kind of convenience for performing this same although prosaic yet indispensable being-need, on account of which these contemporary Americans, who in their naïvete consider themselves already civilized to the ne plus ultra, have invented these comfortable seats in their water closets.
42.958	“This was precisely during the period when the chief center of culture for the whole of your planet was the country Tikliamish and when this country was experiencing the height of its splendor.
42.958	“For this being-function, the beings of the country Tikliamish invented something rather like these American comfortable seats, and this maleficent invention also spread widely everywhere among all the other beings of that ill-fated planet.
42.958	“If the said invention of the beings of the Tikliamishian civilization were compared with the invention of these contemporary Americans then, according to the expression they sometimes use for comparison, the latter may be called a ‘child’s toy.’
42.958	“The beings of the Tikliamishian civilization invented a certain kind of ‘comfortable couch bed’ which could be used for sleeping as well as for what is called ‘lounging’ so that while lying on this ‘wonderful contrivance,’ and without manifesting the slightest being-effort whatsoever, they could perform this same inevitable being-need for which the contemporary beings of the continent America have invented their ‘seats of ease.’
42.958	“These ‘wonder beds’ were so adapted for this purpose that a lever by the side of the bed had only to be touched lightly to enable one instantly, in the bed itself, to perform this same indispensable need freely and of course very ‘cosily’ and also with the greatest so to say ‘chic.’
42.958-9	“It will not be superfluous, my boy, for you to know also, by the way, that these same famous ‘beds’ had the effect of causing great and momentous events in the process of their ordinary existence.
42.959	“So long as the previous relatively normal system still prevailed among the beings there for the said being-functions, everything went along very peacefully and quietly, but as soon as certain what are called power-possessing and wealth-possessing beings of that time had invented for this purpose the mentioned ‘comfortable beds,’ which came to be called ‘if you wish to enjoy felicity then enjoy it with a bang,’ there then began among the ordinary beings of that time that which led to the said serious and deplorable consequences.
42.959	“I must tell you that it was just during those years when the beings of Tikliamish were inventing these ‘wonder beds,’ that this planet of yours underwent a common cosmic process of ‘Chirnooanovo,’ that is to say, that, concomitantly with the displacement of the gravity center movement of this solar system in the movement of the common-cosmic harmony, the center of gravity of this planet itself was also displaced.
42.959	“During such years, as you already know, thanks to this cosmic manifestation, there increases everywhere on planets—in the psyche of the beings inhabiting any planet undergoing ‘Chirnooanovo’—a ‘Blagonoorarirnian sensation,’ or, as it is otherwise called, ‘remorse of conscience’ for one’s past deeds against one’s own convictions.
42.959-60	“But there on your planet, thanks to the common presences of your favorites having become so odd, from a variety of causes both proceeding from outside of them and arising through their own fault, the result of the action of this common-cosmic actualization does not proceed in them as it proceeds in the presences of the three-brained beings arising on other planets during ‘Chirnooanovo’; that is to say, instead of this remorse of conscience, there usually arise there and become widespread certain specific processes, called the ‘reciprocal destruction of Microcosmoses in the Tetartocosmos,’ which processes, when proceeding in them, they themselves look upon as what are called among them ‘epidemics’ and which in ancient times were known by the names ‘Kalunom,’ ‘Morkrokh,’ ‘Selnoano,’ etc., and in present days by the names ‘Black Death,’ ‘cholera,’ ‘Spanish influenza,’ and so on.
42.960	“Well then, thanks to the fact that many diseases then called ‘Kolbana,’ ‘Tirdiank,’ ‘Moyasul,’ ‘Champarnakh,’ and so on, and called by contemporary beings ‘tabes,’ ‘sclerosis disseminata,’ ‘hemorrhoids,’ ‘ishias,’ ‘hemiplegia,’ and so on, were widely prevalent among the majority of those using these exceedingly comfortable ‘couch beds,’ those beings from among them in whose common presences the data for Hasnamussian properties had, thanks to the complete absence of the actualization of being-Partkdolg-duty, already previously begun to be crystallized more intensively than usual, and among whom were those called ‘revolutionaries,’ observing this particularity, decided to take advantage of it for their own purposes; that is to say, types of this kind invented and circulated broadcast among the masses of beings of that time, that all the aforesaid epidemic contagious diseases resulted from the fact that, thanks to the beds, ‘if you wish to enjoy felicity, then enjoy it with a mighty bang,’ the ‘parasitic bourgeois’ contracted various diseases, which diseases afterwards spread by contagion among the masses.
42.960-1	“Thanks to that peculiar inherency of theirs called ‘suggestibility,’ which I mentioned before and which had been acquired in their common presences, all the surrounding beings, of course, believed this as they call it ‘propaganda of theirs, and, there usually being in these cases a quantity of talk about it, there was gradually crystallized in each of them the periodically arising factor which actualizes in their common presences that strange and relatively prolonged ‘psychic state,’ which I should call the ‘loss of sensation of self; in consequence of which, as also usually happens there, they set about destroying everywhere, not only these ‘wonder beds,’ but also the existence of those beings who used them.
42.961	“Although the acute stage of this, so to say, obtuseness in the presences of most of the ordinary beings of that period soon passed, nevertheless the ‘raging destruction’ both of these beds themselves and of the beings who used them continued by momentum during several terrestrial years. Eventually, this maleficent invention went completely out of use, and soon it was even forgotten that such beds had ever existed on the planet.
42.961	“At any rate, it can be said with certainty that if the ‘civilization’ of the beings of the group now breeding on the continent America develops in its present spirit and at its present rate, then they also will unquestionably ‘civilize themselves’ to the degree of having ‘bed couches’ as astonishing as were those beds ‘if you wish to enjoy felicity, then enjoy it with a bang.’
42.961	“It will not be amiss now, my boy, also to remark, by way of illustration, upon the invention of preserved products for the first being-food and their application in the process of being-existence by the beings of this contemporary group, who in recent times have chanced to become for the strange Reason of the beings of all the other continents, so to say, ‘objects of imitation,’ chiefly on account simply of the fact that they were supposed to be the first on their planet to invent such beneficent and convenient being-usages, namely, in the given case, the device of feeding themselves with preserved products, thanks to which they, as it were, save time.
42.961-2	“The contemporary unfortunate three-brained beings in general who breed on your planet are, of course, not aware, nor for causes already explained to you, have they in themselves the possibility of reflecting, that their remote ancestors of various past ages, who were much more normally formed into responsible beings, must have ‘racked their brains,’ as is said, ‘not a little’ to discover means for minimizing the time spent on this inevitable being-necessity of feeding themselves with products; and having found such apparently expedient methods, they every time, after a brief trial of them, eventually became convinced that these products, of whatever kind and however they might be preserved, always deteriorated with time and became worthless for their first-food; and hence they ceased to employ these methods in the process of their ordinary existence.
42.962	“As a parallel to this contemporary means of preserving products for one’s first being-food in hermetically sealed vessels, let us take as an example that means of preserving which I personally have witnessed in the country Maralpleicie.
42.962	“It was just at the time when the beings of the locality of Maralpleicie were vying in everything with the beings of the country Tikliamish and were engaged in a fierce rivalry with them that the beings of all other countries should consider their country the first and foremost ‘center of culture.’
42.962	“Just then it was that they invented among other things something similar to these American preserves.
42.962	“Those beings of Maralpleicie, however, preserved their edible products sealed hermetically not in ‘poison-exuding tin cans,’ such as the contemporary beings of the continent America use, but in what were then called ‘Sikharenenian vessels.’
42.962-3	“Those Sikharenenian vessels in Maralpleicie were prepared from very finely ground, what are called there ‘mother-of-pearl,’ ‘yolks of hen’s eggs,’ and a glue obtained from the fish named the Choozna sturgeon.
42.963	“These vessels had the appearance and quality of the unpolished glass jars now existing there on your planet.
42.963	“In spite of all the obvious advantages of preserving products in such vessels, yet nevertheless, when certain beings with Reason in the country Maralpleicie constated that in those beings who habitually used products preserved in this way there was gradually atrophied what is called ‘organic shame,’ then, having succeeded in widely spreading among the other ordinary beings information about this constatation of theirs, all the other surrounding beings, similar to them, gradually ceased to employ this method, and eventually it was so completely dropped from common use that even the knowledge that such a method had ever existed failed even to reach the fifth or sixth generation after them.
42.963	“On this continent Asia there have existed throughout almost all the ages all kinds of methods for preserving edible products for a long time, and even now several of these methods exist there which have come down to the contemporary beings from their very remote ancestors.
42.963	“But of all these methods not one was so harmful for the beings themselves as this method invented by these contemporary beings of the continent America, namely, the preserving of products in poison-exuding tin cans.
42.963	“Even this device for preserving products ‘hermetically sealed’ so that without being exposed to the effects of the atmosphere they should, as it were, escape the process of decomposition, exists among certain contemporary Asiatic groups, but they do not all have recourse for this purpose to the aid of these poison-exuding American tin cans.
42.963	“At the present time on the continent Asia, only what is called ‘sheep’s-tail fat’ is used for this purpose.
42.964	“‘Sheep’s-tail fat’ is a product which is formed in a large quantity around the tail of a certain form of two-brained quadruped being, named there ‘sheep,’ breeding everywhere on the continent Asia.
42.964	“In this ‘sheep’s-tail fat’ there are no cosmic crystallizations harmful for the common presence of a three-brained being, and it is itself one of the chief products for the first-food of the majority of the beings of these general groups on the continent Asia. But as regards the metals from which these contemporary beings of the continent America prepare cans for the preservation of their products, however completely they may be isolated on the inside from the influence of the atmosphere, they also after a definite time, like the contents of the cans, give off from themselves various of their active elements, some of which are very, as they express it, poisonous’ for the common presences of beings in general.
42.964	“These poisonous active elements which issue from tin or similar metal, remaining in hermetically closed cans, are unable to volatilize into space, and in time, meeting among the elements of the products within these cans certain elements which correspond to them by what is called ‘kinship of class by number of vibrations,’ fuse with them according to the cosmic law named ‘Fusion’ and remain in them; and together with these products of course afterwards enter into the common organism of the beings who consume them.
42.964	“Besides preserving their products in these poison-exuding tin cans so harmful for them, your contemporary favorites grouped on this continent America furthermore preserve them preferably in raw states.
42.964-5	“The beings of the continent Asia always preserve all their food products roasted or boiled, because, according to this custom which reached them from their remote ancestors, products preserved in this way do not decompose so rapidly as when raw.
42.965	“The explanation is that when a product is boiled or roasted, there is induced an artificial what is called ‘chemical fusion’ of the several active elements of which the fundamental mass of the given product consists, thanks to which fusion many active elements useful for beings remain in the products for a comparatively much longer time.
42.965	“I again advise you to become thoroughly and particularly well acquainted with all the kinds of fusion proceeding in the Megalocosmos, with the chemical as well as with the mechanical.
42.965	“Knowledge of this cosmic law will greatly help you, by the way, to represent to yourself and well understand why and how these numerous and varied formations are in general produced in Nature.
42.965	“And how what is called a ‘permanent fusion of elements’ is obtained in products from boiling or roasting, you will clearly understand if, upon reflection, you grasp merely the process which occurs during the artificial preparation of ‘prosphora.’
42.965	“Prosphora or bread is in general made everywhere by beings who are aware of its sacred significance. Only your contemporary favorites regard its preparation without any consciousness of its effect, but merely as a practice automatically transmitted to them by inheritance.
42.965-6	“In this bread the crystallization of cosmic substances is also obtained according to the law of Triamazikamno, the substances from the following three relatively independent sources serving as the three holy forces of this sacred law, namely: the holy affirming or active principle is the totality of those cosmic substances composing what your favorites call ‘water’; the denying or passive principle is the totality of the substances composing what your favorites call the ‘flour’ obtained from the divine wheat grain; and the holy reconciling or neutralizing principle is the substance issuing or obtained as the result of burning, or, as your favorites say, from ‘fire.’
42.966	“For a better elucidation of the thought I have expressed concerning the significance of a permanent fusion of diverse-sourced cosmic substances, let us take as an example the said relatively independent totality of substances which in the formation of this prosphora or bread is the active principle, namely, the relatively independent totality which is called by your favorites ‘water.’
42.966	“This relatively independent totality of cosmic substances named there on the Earth water, being in itself one might say, a ‘natural mechanical mixture,’ can be preserved exclusively only in conditions of conjunction with common Nature. If the connection of this water with common Nature is cut, that is to say, if a little of this water is taken out of a river and kept separately in a vessel, then after a certain time the water in this vessel inevitably begins to be gradually destroyed, or as it might otherwise be said, to decompose, and this process, to the perceptive organs of beings, usually smells very ‘malodorously,’ or, as your favorites would say, this water soon ‘stinks.’
42.966	“And the same will proceed with the mixture, as in the given case of this said water and flour. Only a temporary mechanical mixture or what is called ‘dough’ will be obtained, in which this water, after lasting also a relatively short time, will inevitably begin to decompose.
42.966-7	“Further, if this dough, that is, water mixed with flour, is baked over a fire, then, thanks to substances issuing from or formed from this fire—substances which in the given case, as I have already said, serve as the third holy neutralizing force of the sacred law of Triamazikamno—there will result in the given case a chemical fusion, that is, a ‘permanent fusion of substances,’ as a result of which the new totality of substances obtained from this water and the flour, namely, the prosphora or bread, will now resist the merciless Heropass, that is to say, it will not decompose for a much longer time.
42.967	“The bread made in this way can ‘dry,’ ‘crumble,’ or even be to all appearances gradually completely destroyed, yet from this process of transformation the elements of the water will, during the said fairly long time, be no further destroyed but will remain active for the said time among what are called the ‘enduring prosphorian active elements.’
42.967	“And in the given case, my boy, I again repeat that if the contemporary beings breeding on the continent of Asia preserve their products exclusively only in a roasted or boiled state, and not when raw, as the contemporary American beings prefer to do, this also occurs there in consequence of the fact that these usages reached the beings of Asia from their ancestors, the term of whose communities was many centuries, and who in consequence had a long practical experience, whereas the term of the community of those American beings is still, as our wise teacher would say, ‘only a day and a half.’
42.967	“In order that you may better evaluate the significance of this invention of those contemporary beings breeding on the continent America, and which is, as it were, the real outcome of contemporary civilization, I do not consider it superfluous to inform you also of the methods of preserving several other products for a long time, which methods are now in use among the beings of the continent Asia. “Such, for instance, is the method of preparing what is called ‘Haoorma,’ a particularly favorite product of the beings of many groups of the continent Asia.
42.967-8	“This Haoorma on the continent Asia is prepared in a very simple manner, namely, small pieces of well-roasted meat are tightly packed into ‘earthenware jars’ or goatskin ‘Boordooks.’ (A Boordook is the skin stripped in a special manner from the being called ‘goat.’)
42.968	“Melted sheep’s-tail fat is then poured over these roasted pieces of meat.
42.968	“Although the pieces of roasted meat thus covered with fat do also gradually deteriorate with time, yet over a relatively very long time they do not acquire in themselves any poison.
42.968	“The beings of the continent Asia use this Haoorma either cold or heated up.
42.968	“In the latter case, it is as if the meat were freshly killed.
42.968	“Another very favorite product there preservable for a long time is what is called ‘Yagliyemmish,’ which consists of nothing else than various fruits. “For this purpose, fruits freshly gathered from the tree are immediately strung on a cord in the form of what is called a necklace and then thoroughly boiled in water; when these odd necklaces are cooled, they also are dipped several times in melted sheep’s-tail fat and, after all this, they are hung up somewhere, where they are exposed to the effects of a current of air.
42.968	“However long fruit prepared in this way may hang, it scarcely ever spoils, and when these odd necklaces are to be used for food, they are put into hot water for a little, whereupon all the fat on them being heated entirely disappears, and the fruit itself is as if it had been freshly picked from the tree.
42.968	“Even though fruit preserved in this manner differs very little in taste from fresh fruit and will keep a very long time, nevertheless all the well-to-do beings of the continent Asia prefer fresh fruit.
42.968-9	“And this is obviously because in most of them as direct descendants of the beings of long-existing ancient communities, thanks to the possibilities which have reached them by inheritance, the crystallizing of data for the instinctive sensing of reality proceeds much more intensively in them than in most of your other contemporary favorites.
42.969	“I repeat, my boy, that there on your planet, the beings of past epochs, especially those breeding on this continent of Asia, had already many times attempted to use various methods of preserving products for a long time, and it always ended as follows: first of all, certain persons, thanks to their conscious or accidental observations, discovered the undesirable and harmful consequences of this kind of practice both for themselves and for those near them; and then they communicated this to all the other beings, who, having also made observations with as much impartiality as possible towards themselves, also became convinced of the correctness of these deductions; and ultimately they all ceased to employ these practices in the process of their existence.
42.969	“Even quite recently on this same continent Asia, certain beings again attempted not only to find a method by which it might indeed be possible to preserve their edible products for a long time without deterioration, but they even tried to find some entirely new means for minimizing as much as possible the time spent on this inevitable being-need of feeding on the first-food; and this time they were almost on the verge of discovering a very suitable method for this purpose.
42.969-70	“I can give you satisfactory details concerning the interesting results of their new investigations in this sphere because I not only personally knew the terrestrial three-brained being who by his conscious labors discovered the said method, but was even present personally at several elucidatory experiments upon the possibilities of applying this method to beings, conducted by the initiator himself of the, so to say, ‘new investigations.’
42.970	“His name was Asiman and he was a member of a group of contemporary Asiatic three-brained beings, who, having cognized their slavish dependence upon certain causes within themselves, organized a collective existence for the purpose of working upon themselves to deliver themselves from this inner slavery.
42.970	“It is interesting to notice that this group of contemporary terrestrial three-brained beings, one of whom was this Brother Asiman, had previously existed in the country formerly Pearl-land, now called Hindustan, but afterwards when beings from the continent of Europe appeared there and began disturbing them and hindering their peaceful work, they all migrated across what are now called there the ‘Himalayan Mountains’ and settled partly in the country Tibet and partly in what are called the ‘valleys of the Hindu Kush.’
42.970	“Brother Asiman was one of those who settled in the ‘valleys of the Hindu Kush.’
42.970	“As time was precious to the members of this brotherhood who were working for their self-perfection, and the process of eating robbed them of a great deal of time, this Brother Asiman, being very well versed in the science then called ‘alchemy,’ began working very earnestly in the hope of finding what is called a ‘chemical preparation’ on the introduction of which into himself, a being could exist without spending so much time in the preparation and consumption of all kinds of products for his first-food.
42.970-1	“After long and intensive work, Brother Asiman found for this purpose a combination of chemical substances in the form of a ‘powder,’ one small thimbleful of which, introduced into a being once in every twenty-four hours, made it possible for him both to exist without consuming anything else except water as food, and to perform all his being-obligations without injury.
42.971	“When I chanced to visit this monastery where Brother Asiman existed with the other brethren of the said small group of your contemporary favorites, this preparation had already been used by all the brethren for five months, and Brother Asiman with the participation of others of the brethren who were also very familiar with this question was intensively busy with elucidatory experiments on a large scale.
42.971	“And these same experiments showed them that this preparation could not ultimately suffice for normal being-existence.
42.971	“After this constatation of theirs, they not only entirely ceased the use of this preparation, but even destroyed the very formula for preparing it, which Brother Asiman had found.
42.971	“Several months later I again happened to come upon that monastery and acquainted myself personally with the document of these brethren which had been composed by them on the day when they finally ceased the use of this indeed astonishing preparation.
42.971	“This document contained, among other things, several very interesting details about the action of this said preparation of Asiman. It was stated that when this preparation was introduced into the presence of a being, it had besides its nourishing property, a particular action upon what are called the ‘wandering nerves of the stomach’; from which action not only did the need for food immediately cease in beings, but furthermore, every desire to introduce into oneself any other edible product whatsoever entirely disappeared. And if something should be forcibly introduced, it took a long time before the disagreeable sensation and state thus provoked would pass.
42.971-2	“It was also stated that at the outset no change was noticed in the presence of beings who fed on this preparation. “Even their weight did not diminish. Only after five months did its harmful effect begin to be evident in the common presence of a being in the gradual weakened functioning of certain perceptive organs and of the manifestations of their so to say ableness and sensitiveness. For example, their voices would grow weaker, and their sight, hearing, and so on, worse. Furthermore, in several of them from the beginning of the derangement of these being-functions, changes were observed in their common psychic state.
42.972	“In the document composed by these brethren, there was among other things, a lengthy description of the changes in the character of beings after five months’ use of this remarkable preparation of Asiman, and, in illustration, some very excellent and apt comparisons were given.
42.972	“Although the examples themselves which were given for comparison in this document have not remained in my memory, yet thanks to the so to say ‘flavor’ of them which I have retained, I shall be able to give you their purport if I use the language of our respected Mullah Nassr Eddin.
42.972	“For example, an ordinary good fellow with a character of, as they say, one of ‘God’s angels,’ suddenly became as irritable as those of whom our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin once said:
42.972	“‘He is as irritable as a man who has just undergone full treatment by a famous European nerve specialist.’
42.972-3	“Or again, beings who one day had been as pacific as the little butter ‘lambs’ which the pious place on the festal table at their most important religious feasts, would on the next day get as exasperated as a German professor when some Frenchman, also a professor, discovers something new in contemporary science.
42.973	“Or again, a being whose love resembled that of a contemporary terrestrial suitor for a rich widow—of course before he has received a single penny from her—would turn just as spiteful as one of those malicious persons who, foaming at the mouth, will hate that poor author who is now writing about you and me, in his work entitled An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man.
42.973	“This poor upstart author, by the way, will be hated both by the ‘full-bodied materialists’ and by the ‘ninety-six carat deists’ and even by those of the three-brained beings who have taken your fancy, who, when their stomachs are full and their ‘mistresses’ are for the moment making ‘no scenes,’ are ‘incorrigible optimists,’ but who, quite the contrary, when their stomachs are empty are ‘hopeless pessimists.’
42.973	“Now, my boy, that we have mentioned this ‘queer upstart writer,’ there is nothing for it but to inform you here of a certain perplexity which already long ago arose in me in regard to him and which has progressively increased, and that is concerning a naïvete of his.
42.973-4	“I must explain that from the very beginning of his responsible existence, he also became, whether by accident or by the will of Fate I do not know, a follower, and in fact a very devout follower, of our wise and esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin, and furthermore in the ordinary process of his being-existence he has never lost the smallest opportunity to act entirely according to Mullah Nassr Eddin’s unprecedently wise and inimitable sayings. And now, according to the information which has reached me by etherogram, all of a sudden he appears to be constantly acting contrary to one of the very serious and exceptionally practical counsels—certainly not accessible to everybody—of this Teacher above all teachers, which is formulated in the following words:
42.974	“‘Ekh, Brother! Here on the Earth if you speak the truth you’re a great fool, whereas if you wriggle with your soul you are only a “scoundrel,” though also a big one. So it is best of all to do nothing, but just recline on your divan and learn to sing like the sparrow that had not yet turned into an American canary.’
42.974	“Now, my boy, absorb carefully the information about the causes of the gradual disharmonization—in the presences of these contemporary beings of the continent America—of their second fundamental being-function, namely, the function of sex.
42.974	“The disharmony of this function in them is due also to several causes of diverse character, but the fundamental cause, in my opinion, is their negligence ‘engendered in their essence and already quite fused with their nature’ in keeping their sex organs clean.
42.974	“Just like the beings of the continent of Europe, the care they give to their faces and their use of what is called ‘facial cosmetics’ are only equaled by their neglect of these said organs of theirs; whereas more or less conscious three-brained beings are required to observe the utmost cleanliness in respect to just these organs.
42.974	“They cannot, however, be entirely blamed, because in this respect the beings of the continent of Europe are most at fault with their customs existing in the process of their ordinary being-existence.
42.974	“The point is that this as yet recently arisen contemporary large group is almost exclusively formed and continues to be supplied with beings from various large and small groups populating the continent of Europe.
42.974-5	“The result is that even if the majority of the three-brained beings now composing this newly formed large group there, are not themselves emigrants from the continent of Europe, their fathers or grandfathers were, who, migrating to this continent of America, took along with them also their European customs, among which were those which brought about this uncleanliness in respect of their sex organs.
42.975	“So, my boy, when I now tell you how the matter stands as regards the sex question among the Americans, bear in mind that everything I say will also refer to the beings of the continent Europe.
42.975	“The results of this uncleanliness of the contemporary three-brained beings of the planet Earth, who have taken your fancy and who breed on the continents of Europe and America, are very clearly indicated in my statistics.
42.975	“Let us take for example what are called there ‘venereal diseases.’ These diseases are so widespread on the continent of Europe and on this continent of America, that at the present time you will scarcely ever meet a being who has not one or another form of those diseases.
42.975	“There is no harm in your knowing among other things, a little more about those interesting and peculiar, data, which, in my statistics, indicate in figures how much more of these diseases there is among the beings of the continents America and Europe, than among those of the continent Asia.
42.975	“Many of these venereal diseases are entirely absent among the beings of the old communities of the continent of Asia, whereas among the beings populating the continents Europe and America, these diseases are almost epidemical.
42.975-6	“Let us take for example what is called ‘clap,’ or as scientists there call it ‘gonorrhoea.’ On the continent of Europe and America almost all the beings both of male and female sex have this disease in one of its different stages, but on the continent Asia it is met with only on the borders where beings frequently mix with the beings of the continent of Europe.
42.976	“A good example of what has just been said are the beings belonging to the group existing there under the name Persia, which occupies a relatively large territory on the continent Asia.
42.976	“Among the beings dwelling in the central, eastern, southern, and western areas of this relatively large territory, the mentioned diseases are not to be found at all.
42.976	“But in the northern part, especially in the locality called ‘Azerbaijan,’ which comes into direct contact with the large half-European, half-Asiatic community called Russia, the percentage of beings infected with this disease increases more and more in proportion to their proximity to this Russia.
42.976	“And exactly the same occurs in other Eastern countries of the continent of Asia: the percentage of this disease increases proportionately to the contact of their beings with the beings of the continent of Europe; for example, in the country called ‘India and partly in China, this disease has in recent times become widespread among the beings there, chiefly in those places where they come into contact with European beings of the community England.
42.976	“It can thus be said that the chief disseminators of this disease among the beings of the continent Asia are, from the northwestern side, the beings of the large group Russia, and from the eastern side, the beings of the community England.
42.976	“The cause of the absence of this disease as well as of many other evils in the said parts of the continent of Asia is in my opinion that the majority of the beings of the continent Asia have several very good customs for their everyday existence, which have reached them likewise from their ancient ancestors.
42.977	“And these customs are so deeply implanted in their everyday existence by their religion that at the present time, observing them mechanically without any wiseacring, beings are thereby more or less ensured against several evils which, owing to the abnormally established conditions of being-existence, have been gradually formed and still continue to be formed in uncountable numbers on that ill-fated planet.
42.977	“The beings of most of the groups on the continent Asia are safeguarded against many venereal diseases as well as against any other ‘sexual abnormalities’, if only, for instance, by such customs known there by the names ‘Sooniat’ and ‘Abdest.’
42.977	“The first of these customs, namely, sooniat, or, as it is otherwise called ‘circumcision,’ not only saves most of the Asiatic beings of responsible age from many venereal diseases there, but also safeguards many of the children and youths of that continent against the ‘scourge’ mercilessly spread among the children and youths of the continents of Europe and America, namely, that ‘scourge’ known there under the name ‘onanism.’
42.977	“According to this custom, the beings of responsible age in most of the contemporary groups of the continent of Asia usually perform on their ‘results’—that is to say, on their children—at a certain age, a ritual which consists in this, that in the case of boys they cut what they call the ‘frenum’ and ‘prepuce’ of the ‘penis.’
42.977	“And today those children of your contemporary favorites who of course automatically are subjects of this custom, are almost completely safeguarded against the inevitable result of several evils already definitely fixed in the process of the existence of your favorites.
42.977-8	“For example, according to my statistics, the said ‘scourge’ that is ‘children’s onanism,’ is scarcely met with among the children of those three-brained beings there who observe this custom of ‘circumcision,’ whereas all the children and youths of the beings who fail to observe this custom are without exception exposed to this same sexual abnormality.
42.978	“The second custom I mentioned, namely, abdest, which by the way is called differently by the beings of different groups on the continent Asia, is nothing else than the obligatory ablution of the sex organs after every visit to what is called the ‘toilet.’
42.978	“Thanks chiefly to this second custom, most of your favorites breeding on the continent of Asia are safeguarded against many venereal diseases and other sexual abnormalities there.”
42.978	Having said this, Beelzebub became thoughtful, and after a long pause said:
42.978	“The present theme of our conversation has reminded me of a certain very interesting conversation, which I had there during my sojourn in France, with a young sympathetic three-brained being. I think that perhaps it would now be best for your understanding of all that has just been said, if I repeat to you that conversation in full, all the more so as, besides explaining the meaning of the custom abdest or ablution, this conversation will enlighten you on many further questions concerning the peculiar psyche of these favorites of yours.
42.978	“This same being, my conversation with whom I recall and now intend to repeat to you, was just that young Persian who, you remember, as I have already told you, was at the request of our mutual acquaintances my ‘guide’ in the city of Paris, where I happened to be, as I have already told you, just before my departure to this same continent America.
42.978	“One day I was waiting for this young Persian in a cafe in the city of Paris—as always the same Grand Café.
42.978	“When he arrived I noticed by his eyes that this time he was, as they say there, more ‘drunk’ than usual.
42.979	“In general he always drank more than enough of the ‘alcoholic liquids; existing there; and when we happened to be together in Paris in the restaurants of Montmartre where it was obligatory to order champagne which I neither liked nor drank, he would always drink it all alone with great pleasure.
42.979	“Besides always drinking, he was also, as is said there a great ‘petticoast chaser.’
42.979	“The moment he saw what they call there the ‘pretty face’ of a being of the female sex, his whole body and even his breathing suddenly changed.
42.979	“When I noticed that he was this time more intoxicated than usual and when, having sat down beside me, he ordered coffee with what is called there an ‘aperitif,’ I asked him:
42.979	“‘Explain to me, please, my young friend, why do you always drink this “poison”?’
42.979	“To this question of mine he answered:
42.979	“‘Ekh! My dear Doctor! I drink this “poison,” in the first place, because I am so accustomed to it that I cannot now stop drinking without suffering, and secondly I drink it because only thanks to the effect of the alcohol can I calmly look on at the obscenity which goes on here,’ he added, waving his hand around.
42.979	“‘I began drinking this, as you called it, poison because the accidental and for me unlucky and wretched circumstances of my life were so arranged that I had to come and live a long time in this maleficent Europe.
42.979	“‘I first began to drink because everybody here whom I met also drank, and unless you drink, you are called a “woman,” a “girl,” “dolly,” “dearie,” “sissy,” “ninny,” and similar derisive names. Not wishing my business acquaintances to call me by these offensive names I also began to drink.
42.979-80	“‘And in addition, thanks also to the fact that when I first came over to Europe, conditions of life here in respect of morality and patriarchality were entirely in contrast with those conditions in which I was born and brought up, I, seeing and perceiving all this, used to experience a painful feeling of shame and an unaccountable embarrassment. At the same time I noticed that from the effect of the alcohol I drank, not only was the depression I experienced alleviated, but I could look upon it all quite calmly, and even have the wish to participate in this abnormal life, so contradictory of my nature and my established views.
42.980	“‘Thus it came about that every time I began to feel the same unpleasant sensation I began to drink this alcohol, even with a feeling of some self-justification, and in this way became gradually accustomed to this, as you have quite justly called it, poison.’
42.980	“Having said this with a perceptive impulse of heartfelt grief, he paused a while to puff at his cigarette mixed with ‘Tambak,’ and, taking this opportunity, I asked him as follows:
42.980	“‘Well, all right… let us assume I have more or less understood your explanation of your inexcusable drunkenness, and can put myself in your position, but what do you say about your other, and, from my point of view, also inexcusable vice, namely, your “petticoat drooling”? “‘Why! You run after every petticoat if only it hangs about someone with long hair!’
42.980	“At this question of mine, he, sighing deeply, resumed his speaking as follows: “‘It seems to me that I got this habit, as well, partly for the reason I mentioned, but I think this weakness of mine can be explained by still another very interesting psychological cause.’
42.980	∅
42.980-1	“Of course I expressed the desire to hear him, but first I suggested our going inside that Grand Café into the hall of the restaurant itself, as it was already getting damp out of doors.
42.981	“When we were seated in the hall of the restaurant and had ordered their ‘famous champagne,’ he continued as follows:
42.981	“‘When you lived among us in Persia, my dear Doctor, you perhaps happened to observe the attitude existing there, very specific for us Persians, of men towards women.
42.981	“‘Namely, among us in Persia, men have two definite, one can say, “organic attitudes” towards women, in accordance with which women are, for us men, even unconsciously on our part, very sharply divided into two categories.
42.981	“‘The first attitude is towards the woman, the present or future mother; and the second towards the woman-female.
42.981	“‘This property of the men of our Persia who have in their nature data for these two independent attitudes and for this instinctive feeling, began to be formed only recently, about two and a half centuries ago.
42.981	“‘According to the explanations once given me by my “Mullah uncle,” whom those around him called behind his back “a Mullah of the old school,” it seems that, two or three centuries ago, owing to causes evidently ensuing from certain higher World-laws, men began to make war on each other everywhere on the Earth, and especially among us in Asia, more intensively than usual, and at the same time, somehow, in most of the men, the feeling of piety began very distinctly to decline and in some of them entirely disappeared.
42.981	“‘And just at that period a certain form of psychic disease spread among men from which many who were infected by it ultimately either became quite insane or committed suicide.
42.981-2	“‘Then certain wise people of various independent groups on the continent of Asia began, with the help of various persons representative of medicine of that time—which, by the way, was then very superior to contemporary medicine—very earnestly to seek the causes of that human misfortune.
42.982	“‘After long impartial labors they discovered, in the first place, that the men who contracted this disease were exclusively those in whose subconsciousness, for some reason or other, there never arose any impulse of faith in anybody or in anything, and secondly, that those adult men who periodically performed the normal ritual of intercourse with women were not at all subject to this disease.
42.982	“‘When the news of this conclusion of theirs spread over the continent of Asia, all the rulers and chiefs of the separate Asiatic groups of that time grew alarmed, as almost all the regular troops at their disposal consisted of adult men, and moreover, the constant wars permitted none of them to live normally with his family.
42.982	“‘In view of the fact that at that period all the governments of the separate Asiatic countries needed and wished to have healthy and strong armies, they were compelled to conclude a truce and either themselves assemble or send their representatives to one place, namely, to the capital of what was then called the “Kilmantooshian Khanate,” in order jointly to find a way out of the situation which had arisen.
42.982-3	“‘After serious reflections and deliberations, these rulers of the various independent groups of Asiatic peoples, or their representatives, together of course with the representatives of medicine of that time, then came to the conclusion that it was possible to deal with the situation which had arisen, only if what is called prostitution should be established everywhere on the continent of Asia, as is now the case on the continent of Europe, and only if the power-possessing people should deliberately encourage its development and co-operate in its success.
42.983	“‘Almost all the chiefs of the governments of that time fully agreed with this conclusion of the representatives of all the peoples of the continent of Asia who had gathered together in the capital of the Kilmantooshian Khanate, and, without experiencing any remorse of conscience, they began from then on not only to encourage and aid women in general—except indeed just their own daughters—to engage in this occupation so “abhorrently repulsive” to the nature of every normal person, but also to give, even with a feeling of benevolence, as if this were the most considerate manifestation of man, every possible assistance to women, without distinction of caste or religion, who might wish to leave or to go anywhere for this filthy purpose.
42.983	“‘Now that we have touched upon this subject, allow me, respected Doctor, to digress, and tell you here the reflections, in my view very interesting and wise, of this same Mullah uncle of mine concerning the causes in general of the arising of this evil and scourge of contemporary civilization.
42.983	“‘Once, on one of the days of Ramadan, when we were conversing as usual while awaiting the call of the Mullah of our district announcing the meal hour, and we happened to be speaking about this human “scourge,” he then, among other things, said:
42.983	“‘“It is wrong and unjust of you to blame and despise all women of this kind.
42.983	“‘“Most of them are not themselves personally to blame for their sad lot; one should blame exclusively only their parents, husbands, and guardians.
42.983-4	“‘“And precisely their parents, husbands, and guardians should be blamed and despised who have allowed the arising in them during their age preparatory to adult being—while as yet they have not their own good sense—of the property called laziness.
42.984	“‘“Although at this age this laziness is as yet only automatic in them, and young people have not to make very great efforts to overcome it, and are able in consequence, on acquiring their own good sense, not to allow it to gain complete control of them, yet nevertheless, as regards the organization of women’s psyche, the active principle must, owing to results not dependent on our will but ensuing from World-laws, unfailingly participate in every initiative and in every good manifestation of theirs.
42.984-5	“‘“And it is just precisely in the early years of the adult life of these contemporary unfortunate prospective women-mothers—thanks to the various ideas of the people of contemporary civilization concerning ‘equal rights for women’ existing there under the catchwords ‘equal rights,’ ‘equal opportunities,’ etc…. ideas which are now already widespread everywhere on the Earth, which are naïve to the understanding of a man who has lived his life normally, and which are unconsciously accepted also by the majority of contemporary men—that these contemporary not yet completely formed prospective women-mothers, on the one hand, not having around them the law-conformable, requisite sources of the active principle, such as their parents, guardians and husbands, to whom the responsibility for them passes from the moment of marriage, and on the other hand thanks to the intensive process of imagination and enthusiasms which is proper to proceed in them and which is also in this transitional age foreordained by nature according to Law for the purpose of better actualizing the data for the development of their good sense, they, as it were, gradually absorb the said automatic laziness into their very nature, and this laziness remains in their nature, as a progressive and indispensable necessity.
42.985	“‘“A woman with such a nature of course does not wish to fulfill the obligations of a genuine woman-mother, and in view of the fact that being a prostitute enables her just to do nothing and to experience great pleasure, there is gradually formed in her both in her nature and in the ‘passive consciousness’ proper to her a factor for the irresistible urge to be a woman-female.
42.985	“‘“But in consequence of the fact that in the instinct of each of these women the data proper to all women for the impulse of ‘shame’ are not atrophied suddenly and at once, and none of them, with all her mental wishing, can endure to become such a woman in her own native country, every one of them always instinctively and half consciously tries to get away to some other country where, far from her native land, without any inner discomfort, and also without doing anything, she can abandon herself entirely to this profession personally pleasant for her in almost every respect.
42.985	“‘“And as regards the prevalence everywhere on the Earth at the present time of this human misfortune, the cause of this is in my opinion exclusively only those contemporary men in whom, owing to the same reasons, there arises—as in those young women, future prostitutes—a similar what is called ‘organic essential need to do nothing except enjoy oneself,’ and one of the forms of satisfying the criminal need of these ‘ulcers’ among contemporary people consists, in the given case, in enticing and assisting such women to leave their native land for some foreign country.
42.985-6	“‘“It has already been noticed by many contemporary sensible people, that these two different sexes, victims of the same disease, as a rule consciously and instinctively seek and find each other; and in the given case they exemplify the proverb which has existed from olden times, ‘One fisherman recognizes another from afar.’”
42.986	“‘And so, respected Doctor! Thanks just to the aforesaid causes wisely understood by my uncle, many women prostitutes from various other countries then appeared after several years among us in Persia.
42.986	“‘And owing to the instinctive attitudes which, as I have already said, had been acquired during centuries by the local women of Persia without distinction of religion towards morality and patriarchality in family traditions, these foreign women were unable to mix with the general mass of Persian women, with the consequence that from then on, there began to be among us the two categories of women I have mentioned.
42.986	“‘Well then, owing to the fact that the majority of these foreign women, living freely among us in Persia and going about everywhere, in the markets and other public places, often became objects for the gaze of our Persian men, there was gradually formed in the latter, of course unconsciously, along with the already existing attitude towards women as mothers, yet another attitude towards women as simply females.
42.986	“‘The property of having this definite double attitude towards women, being transmitted by inheritance from generation to generation, has even, among us, finally become so rooted that at the present time our men not only distinguish these two categories of women by their appearance as easily as one distinguishes between a man, a sheep, a dog, an ass, etc…. but there has even been formed in them a certain something which instinctively prevents them from mistaking a woman of one category for a woman of another.
42.986-7	“‘Even I myself could always unmistakably tell, from a distance, what sort of woman was passing. How I could tell this, whether by their walk or by some other sign, with the best will in the world I could not now explain, but it is a fact that I could tell and was never mistaken, although, as I have already told you, both categories of women wore similar veils.
42.987	“‘And every normal Persian—normal in the sense of not being under the influence of tambak, alcohol, or opium, the consumption of which has in recent times been unfortunately spreading among us ever more and more—can always unmistakedly tell which woman represents a “woman-mother” and which a “woman-female,” that is, a prostitute.
42.987	“‘To every normal Persian among us, a woman-mother, to whatever religion she may belong and regardless of family and personal relationships, is as his own sister, and a woman of the second category simply an animal who infallibly evokes in him a feeling of aversion.
42.987	“‘This property of instinctive relationship towards women is very strong in our men and is entirely independent of our consciousness.
42.987	“‘For example, even suppose it should happen somehow or other that the youngest and most beautiful woman of any district should find herself in the same bed with a man of the same district, this Persian man, even with all his willingness, provided, I repeat, that he were not under the influence of opium or alcohol, would be organically unable to treat her as a female.
42.987	“‘He would treat her as his own sister; and even if she herself should manifest organic actions towards him, he would only pity her the more, and regard her as “possessed by an unclean power” and would try his best to help her free herself from this misfortune.
42.987-8	“‘And the same Persian man will, in a normal condition, also treat a woman of the second category, that is, a prostitute, as a woman-female, since, however young and beautiful she may be, he will inevitably experience an organic aversion to her; nor could he treat her as a woman unless there had been introduced into his organism the toxic products, maleficent for people, which I have enumerated.
42.988	“‘And so, respected Doctor, I lived until my twentieth year in Persia under these morals and traditions, like every ordinary normal Persian.
42.988	“‘At twenty, on account of shares I had inherited, I happened to become a partner in a certain large firm which exported Persian dried fruits to various European communities.
42.988	“‘And my position in this firm, thanks to various circumstances independent of me, was such that I had to be its chief local representative in those countries of the continent of Europe to which these fruits were exported.
42.988	“‘At first, as I have already told you, I went to Russia, then I went to Germany, Italy, and to other European countries, and now, finally, I have lived here in France already seven years.
42.988	“‘In the life of none of these foreign countries does there exist any such sharply drawn distinction between these two types of women, between the woman-mother and the woman-prostitute, as I saw and felt during the whole of my youth in my native country.
42.988	“‘Everywhere among them the attitude towards women is purely mental, that is, only thought out, not organic.
42.988	“‘For instance, a husband here, however unfaithful his wife may be, will never know it, unless he sees or hears of it.
42.988	“‘But among us in Persia, without any seeing or any gossip, a husband can tell instinctively whether his wife is faithful; and the same thing applies to the woman—a woman among us can feel any infidelity on the part of her husband.
42.988-9	“‘As to this special instinctive feeling in people, several scientists from the continent of Europe have recently even made among us some very serious special investigations.
42.989	“‘As I happened by chance to learn, they came to the clear conclusion that in general where “polyandry” and “polygamy” prevail—that is to say, where “more than one husband” and “more than one wife” are permitted by the established local morality—there is acquired in people a peculiar “psycho-organic” particularity in their relations as men and women.
42.989	“‘This psycho-organic particularity exists also in the people of our Persia, in consequence of the fact that, as you know, we, being followers of the Mohammedan religion, have the custom of polygamy, that is to say, each man is permitted by law to have as many as seven wives.
42.989	“‘And this psycho-organic particularity in our Persian people by the way is that the feeling of the husband’s infidelity never arises in any of the lawful wives concerning his other lawful wives.
42.989	“‘Such a feeling appears in one of the wives only when her husband is unfaithful with a strange woman.
42.989	“‘It is only now, respected Doctor, that living here in Europe and seeing all that goes on between husbands and wives, I fully appreciate our custom of polygamy, so extremely sensibly established and so beneficial both for men and for women.
42.989	“‘Although every man among us is permitted several wives and not simply one, as is the case here in Europe where the Christian religion which allows only one wife is predominant, yet the honesty and conscientiousness of our men towards their wives are beyond compare with the honesty and conscientiousness existing among men here towards their one wife and their family in general.
42.990	“‘Just look around and see what is going on everywhere here.
42.990	“‘Glance around merely at these rooms of the Grand Café, where besides the ordinary professional prostitutes and “gigolos” who are constantly here, hundreds of men and women are always sitting at the little tables gaily conversing.
42.990	“‘Looking at these men and women now, you would say they were married couples who have come here together, either to see Paris or on some family business.
42.990	“‘But as a matter of fact it is practically certain that in all the halls of this Grand Café there is not a single couple among these men and women so gaily chatting and about to go to some hotel together, who are legal man and wife, even though, at the same time, every one of them may be, on paper, a legal husband or wife.
42.990	“‘The other “legal halves” of the men and women sitting here, who have remained at home in the provinces are probably now thinking and telling their acquaintances positively, that their “legal wife” or “legal husband” has gone to the world capital Paris to make some very “important” purchases for the family or to meet somebody there very important for the family, or something else of the same sort.
42.990	“‘But in reality, in order to get here, these birds of passage have had to intrigue for a whole year and cook up every kind of story to convince their legal halves of the necessity of their trip; and now here, in the company of deceivers and intriguers like themselves, in the name of and to the glory of the significance of the “epithalamium,” aided by that fine art which this great contemporary civilization has attained, they decorate their stay-at-home “legal halves” with the largest possible “fine art horns.”
42.990-1	“‘In Europe, thanks to the established order of family life, it has now already come about that if you meet a man and a woman together and notice that while conversing, gay tones are heard in their voices and smiles appear on their faces, you can then be quite sure that very soon, if they have not already done so, they will very effectively and without fail put on some legal half a pair of the largest and most beautiful horns.
42.991	“‘Hence it is that any one slightly cunning man here may already be accounted a very “honorable man” and the “patriarchal father of a family.”
42.991	“‘To those around him it is of no concern that this “honorable” and “patriarchal father of a family” has perhaps at the same time—if of course his means permit—as many mistresses as he pleases on the side; on the contrary, those around him here usually show even more respect for such a man than for one who is unable to have any “mistresses” at all.
42.991	“‘Here, these “honorable husbands” who have the means, not only have on the side, in addition to their one legal wife, seven, but sometimes even seven times seven “illegal wives.”
42.991	“‘And those European husbands who have not the means of supporting several illegal wives in addition to their one legal wife, spend almost the whole of their time in what is called “drooling,” that is to say, for days on end they stare at and as it were “devour with their eyes” every woman they meet.
42.991	“‘In other words, in their thoughts or in their feelings, they betray their one legal wife an innumerable number of times.
42.991-2	“‘But although among us in Persia, a man can have as many as seven legal wives, yet nevertheless all his thoughts and feelings are occupied day and night how he can best arrange both the inner and the outer life of these legal wives of his; and the latter, in their turn, are absorbed in him and try their utmost, also day and night, to aid him in his life duties.
42.992	“‘Here, the reciprocal inner relationship between husband and wife is the same; just as almost all the inner life of the husband is spent in being unfaithful to his one legal wife, so also the inner life of this one wife, from the first day of their union, is always straying outside the family.
42.992	“‘For a European wife, as a rule, as soon as she is married, her husband becomes for her inner life, as they say, her “own property.”
42.992	“‘After the first night, being then secure in her ownership, she begins to devote the whole of her inner life to the pursuit of a certain “something,” that is, to the pursuit of that indefinable “ideal,” which from early childhood is gradually formed in every European girl thanks to that famous “education” which is ever more and more always being invented for them by various contemporary conscienceless writers.
42.992	“‘During my stay in these European countries, I have observed that there is never formed in the being of a woman here, that “something” which should—in her as in our women—constantly maintain what is called “organic shame” or at least the disposition to it, upon which feeling, in my opinion, what is called “wifely duty” is based, and which is just what instinctively aids her to refrain from those actions which make a woman immoral.
42.992	“‘That is why every woman here can very easily, at any favorable opportunity, without either suffering or remorse of conscience, betray her legal husband.
42.992-3	“‘It is in my opinion owing to the absence of this shame in them, that here in Europe the line dividing the woman-mother from the woman-prostitute has gradually ceased to exist and that these two categories of women have already long ago been merged into one; so that at the present time there is neither in the mind nor in the feelings of the men here, that division of women into two categories which almost every Persian makes.
42.993	“‘Here one can now distinguish the woman-mother from the woman-female only if one sees all her manifestations with one’s own eyes.
42.993	“‘In the European conditions of family life, owing to the absence of the beneficent institution of polygamy—an institution which in my opinion should long ago have been introduced here if only for the simple reason that, as statistics show, the women here far outnumber the men—there are thousands of other discomforts and improprieties which need not exist at all.
42.993	“‘And so, respected Doctor, the fundamental cause of my second vice was that being born and brought up in traditions of morality entirely opposed to those here, I came here at an age when the animal passions in a man are especially strong. The ensuing evils for me personally arose chiefly from the fact that I came here while still very young, and, according to the notions here, handsome; and owing to my genuine southern type, a great many women here for whom I represented a new and original type of male began a regular hunt after me.
42.993	“‘They hunted me like “big game.”
42.993	“‘And I was big game for them not only on account of my specific type, a genuine southerner, but also on account of my gentleness and courtesy towards women, properties which had been instilled in me from my earliest childhood in my associations with our Persian women-mothers.
42.993	“‘When I came here and began meeting the women here, I was, of course, even unconsciously on my part, gentle and courteous towards them also.
42.993-4	“‘And so, meeting with the women here and at first only talking with them—chiefly on the subject of contemporary civilization and of the backwardness as it were of our Persia in comparison—I then, of course under the influence of alcohol which I was then already consuming in rather large quantities, fell for the first time, that is to say, I, as a prospective father of a family, behaved vilely.
42.994	“‘Although this cost me at the time much suffering and remorse of conscience, yet the environment together again with the action of this alcohol caused me to fall a second time; and thereafter everything headed so to say down an inclined plane and led to the point where I am now indeed in this respect a most filthy animal.
42.994	“‘Especially now at times, whenever I happen to be completely free from the influence of alcohol, I suffer moral anguish and loathe myself with the whole of my being, and at such moments I hasten all the more to pour this alcohol into myself again in order to forget myself and thus drown my sufferings.
42.994	“‘Having lived this ugly life in the countries of Europe I enumerated, I finally settled down here in Paris, in precisely that European city to which women come from every part of Europe and from other continents with the obvious intention of putting “horns” on their other legal halves. And here in Paris I have now become entirely addicted to both these human vices, that is, to alcohol and, as you have said, to petticoat-chasing, and I run left and right, without any sane reasoning at all. And now the satisfaction of both these vices is more necessary to me than the satisfaction of my hunger.
42.994	“‘That is how it has all gone with me up to the present moment; and what will come next I do not know and do not care to know.
42.994	“‘I always even try my best and struggle with myself not to think about it.’
42.994	“As he said these last words, he sincerely sighed and dejectedly dropped his head. I then asked him:
42.995	“‘But, tell me, please, are you really not afraid of being infected with those terrible diseases which these women usually suffer from, whom a “petticoat-chaser” like you runs after?’
42.995	“At this question of mine he again sighed deeply and after a short pause told me as follows:
42.995	“‘Ekh!… my esteemed and worthy Doctor! “‘In recent years I have thought about this question a great deal. It has even become for me a subject of such interest, that in a certain sense, it has been a blessed means whereby my inner “odious life” has in spite of everything flowed more or less endurably.
42.995	“‘As a physician you will, I think, probably be greatly interested to know how and why this same question interested me so much several years ago, and to what conclusions I arrived after I had, in a relatively normal state, very seriously observed and studied it.
42.995	“‘About five years ago I had such a fit of depression that even alcohol scarcely had any effect on me nor pacified my psychic state.
42.995	“‘And it so happened just then that I often met with certain acquaintances and friends who talked a great deal about filthy diseases and how easily one could be infected with them.
42.995	“‘From these conversations I myself began thinking rather often about myself, and little by little I began fretting about my health almost like a hysterical woman.
42.995	“‘I used often to reflect that being almost always drunk and constantly having affairs with such infected women, then evidently, even if for some reason or other I had so far no obvious symptom of these diseases, I must nevertheless in all probability be already infected with one of them.
42.995-6	“‘After such reflections I first began consulting various specialists, in order to find out what were the early symptoms of whatever disease I already may have had.
42.996	“‘Although none of the local specialists found anything at all in me, I nevertheless continued to doubt, because on the one hand my fretting about my health and on the other hand my own common sense continued to assure me that I must certainly already have been infected with one of these terrible diseases.
42.996	“‘All this brought me to the point that I decided at any expense to have a consultation here in Paris, but this time with the leading specialists from the whole of Europe. I could afford myself this because, owing to the World War, when transport had everywhere broken down, and all commodities had gone up in price, our firm, having everywhere very large stocks of dried fruit in storage, had that year made considerable profits, a fairly good portion of which fell to my share.
42.996	“‘When I had called these European celebrities together, they unanimously pronounced after all kinds of very “detailed” investigations and what are called “chemical analyses” known to them themselves, that there was not the slightest sign of any venereal disease in my organism.
42.996	“‘Although this finding of theirs put an end to the chronic fretting about my health, yet it was the cause of the growth in me of such a strong feeling of inquisitiveness and curiosity to clear up this question, that from then on it became a sort of mania with me, a kind of “idée fixe.”
42.996	“‘And also from then on, the serious observation and study of everything concerning these diseases animated and justified the sense of what I have called “my odious life.”
42.996-7	“‘During this period of my life I made these observations and studies of mine at all times with my whole inner real “I” while in a drunken, semi-drunken, and also sober state.
42.997	“‘And then, among other things I also read assiduously every kind of literature existing here in Europe concerning these diseases, and also most of the books on this question in French and German.
42.997	“‘This I could easily do because, as you see, I have such a command of French that you can scarcely guess that I am not a real French intellectual; and with the German language also I get along very well, because I lived a fairly long time in Germany and always, in my free time, studied their language and their literature for want of something to do.
42.997	“‘So, when I became interested in this question, I was able to become fully acquainted with all the knowledge that exists in contemporary civilization on the subject of venereal diseases.
42.997	“‘In this literature there appeared to be hundreds of theories and hundreds of hypotheses concerning the causes of venereal infection, but I could not discover one convincingly categorical explanation how and why some people are infected with these diseases and others not, and I soon became convinced that I could not clear up this for myself with the knowledge existing on this question at the present time here in Europe.
42.997	“‘From all this literature—putting aside, of course, and not even mentioning the multitude of those thick “scientific books” here, whose contents immediately show every more or less normal person that they were written by people who were as is said “complete ignoramuses” on these questions, that is to say, not specialists in human diseases at all—I got the general impression that people were infected and fall ill with venereal diseases only owing to their own uncleanliness.
42.997-8	“‘When I made this categorical deduction, there was nothing left to me but to concentrate all my attention upon finding out in what my personal cleanliness particularly consisted which had so far protected me against infection.
42.998	“‘I then began to deliberate with myself as follows:
42.998	“‘I do not dress any more cleanly than everybody else living here in Europe; I wash my hands and face every morning also like everybody else; once a week I make a point of going to a Turkish bath, also, it seems, like everyone; and in this way I turned over many things in my mind, and with the result I found nothing in which, in this respect, I was exceptional; and yet the fact remained that, from my loathsome life, I of course ran more chances of being infected.
42.998	“‘From then on my thoughts were guided by two definite convictions already fully established in me: in the first place, that anyone having relations with such women must inevitably sooner or later be infected; and secondly, that only cleanliness protects one from such infection.
42.998	“‘In this manner I continued to reflect for a whole week, until I suddenly remembered a certain habit of mine which here in Europe I always scrupulously concealed from my acquaintances; I remembered, namely, about that habit of mine which is called among us in Persia, abdest.
42.998	“‘The custom of abdest which, according to the notions here might be called ablution, is one of the chief customs among us in Persia.
42.998	“‘Strictly speaking, every follower of the Mohammedan religion must obey this custom, though it is practiced particularly strictly only by Mohammedans of the Shiite sect; and as almost the whole of Persia is composed of Shiites, the custom is nowhere so widely spread as among us in Persia.
42.999	“‘This custom is that every adherent of the Shiite sect, male as well as female, must, after every “toilet” unfailingly wash his sex organs. For this purpose, every family has the necessary appurtenances considered among us even as the most important, consisting of a special vessel, a particular kind of bowl called “Ibrkh.” And the richer the family the more of these bowls they must have, since such a bowl must at once and without fail be put at the disposal of every newly arrived guest.
42.999	“‘I myself was from early childhood also personally accustomed to this habit, and it gradually so entered into my daily life that even when I came here to Europe, where this custom does not exist, I could not live a single day without making this ablution.
42.999	“‘For instance, it is much easier for me to go without washing my face even after a debauch, than not to wash certain parts of my body with cold water after the toilet.
42.999	“‘At present, living here in Europe, I not only have to put up with a great many inconveniences owing to this habit of mine, but I even have to forego some of the modern comfort which I could easily afford.
42.999	“‘For instance, I now live in Paris, where owing to my means I could well afford to live at the very best hotel with every modern comfort, but, thanks to this habit of mine, I cannot do this but am obliged to live in some dirty hotel situated far from the “center” and from all those places where I have to be almost every day.
42.999	“‘In the hotel where I now live, there are no comforts beyond this single comfort which is very important for me; and this is due to the fact that being of old construction, this hotel has “water closets” of the old type and not of the new contemporary American invention, and it is just that old system which is the most convenient and suitable for this habit of mine.
42.999	“‘It is quite likely that I even half consciously chose France as my chief dwelling place because it is still possible to find everywhere here, especially in the provinces, water closets of the old system as among us in Persia.
42.1000	“‘In other countries of Europe this, as they now call it, “Asiatic system” scarcely exists. It has almost everywhere been exchanged for the American system with its comfortable, polished “easy chairs” upon which I, personally, could only rest and read the book called the Decameron.
42.1000	“‘And so, my honorable Doctor, when I suddenly remembered this habit of mine, I at once understood without any further doubt that if I had hitherto escaped being infected with some filthy disease, it was solely because I frequently wash my sex organs with cold water.’
42.1000	“Having said these last words, this sympathetic young Persian extended his arms upwards and with his whole being exclaimed:
42.1000	“‘Blessed forever be the memory of those who created for us that beneficial custom.’
42.1000	“He said nothing further for a long while but looked pensively at a party of Americans sitting nearby who were discussing at that moment whether women dress better in England or in America; and then he suddenly turned to me with the following words:
42.1000	“‘My highly esteemed and honorable Doctor! “‘During my acquaintance with you I have become quite convinced that you are very well educated and, as is said, very well read.
42.1000	“‘Will you be so kind as to give me your weighty opinion, so that I might at last understand and solve one problem which during recent years has aroused my curiosity and which when I am comparatively sober often arises in me and disturbs my thoughts.
42.1000-1	“‘The point is, that living here in Europe where people profess the religion whose followers compose almost half the world, I have not up to now come across a single good custom in their ordinary life, whereas among us who profess the Mohammedan religion, there are very many.
42.1001	“‘What is wrong? What is the cause of it? Were there no good ordinances foredesigned by the Founder of that great religion for the ordinary life of people, the followers of that religion…?’
42.1001	“Well, my boy, as this young Persian had become sympathetic to me during our acquaintance, I could not refuse him this request, and I decided to explain the question to him, but also, of course, in such a form that he would not even suspect who I was and what was my genuine nature.
42.1001	“I told him:
42.1001	“‘You say that in the religion which half the world professes, and you probably mean the “Christian religion,” there are not such good customs as in your Mohammedan religion?
42.1001	“‘Are there not? On the contrary; in that religion there were many more good customs than in any of the religions of today; in none of the ancient religious teachings were so many good regulations for ordinary everyday life laid down as in just that teaching on which this same Christian religion was founded.
42.1001	“‘If the followers of this great religion themselves, especially those who are called the “elders of the church” of the Middle Ages, treated this religion, step by step, as “Bluebeard” treated his wives, that is to say, put them into derision and changed all their beauty and charm—that is already quite a different matter.
42.1001-2	“‘In general you must know that all the great genuine religions which have existed down to the present time, created, as history itself testifies, by men of equal attainment in regard to the perfecting of their Pure Reason, are always based on the same truths. The difference in those religions is only in the definite regulations they lay down for the observance of certain details and of what are called rituals; and this difference is the result of the deliberate adoption by the great founders of these regulations which suited the degree of mental perfection of the people of the given period.
42.1002	“‘At the root of every new doctrine upon which religions are founded, dogmas are always to be found, which have been taken from earlier religions and which had already been well fixed in the life of the people.
42.1002	“‘And in this case, the saying is fully justified which has existed among people from of old—“there is nothing new under the sun.”
42.1002	“‘The only things new in these religious teachings, as I have said, are the small details, intentionally adapted by the great founders to the degree of mental perfection of the people of the given epoch. And so as the root of this same doctrine upon which the Christian religion is based there was placed almost the whole of the previously existing great teaching which is now called Judaism, whose followers once also numbered almost, as is said, half the “world.”
42.1002	“‘The great founders of the Christian religion, having taken the Judaic doctrine as their basis, changed only its outer details according to the degree of mental development of the contemporaries of Jesus Christ, and in it they effectively provided for everything necessary for the welfare of people.
42.1002	“‘Provision was made in it, as is said, both for the soul and for the body; and it even provided all the necessary regulations for a peaceful and happy existence. And this was all surpassingly wisely provided for in such a way that this religion might be suitable also for people of much later epochs.
42.1002-3	“‘Had the doctrine of this religion remained unchanged, it might even perhaps have suited these contemporary people, who, by the way, our Mullah Nassr Eddin defines by his expression, “He will blink only if you poke his eye with a rafter.”
42.1003	“‘At its origin there entered into this Christian religion, besides those specially established regulations for ordinary existence which met the needs of the contemporaries of Jesus Christ, also many excellent customs which were already in existence and had become well fixed in the life of the people who were followers of the Judaic religion.
42.1003	“‘Even those good customs which now exist among you in the Mohammedan religion were transmitted to you from the Judaic religion. Take, for example, just that custom of “sooniat” or circumcision which you mentioned. This custom was at first contained in this Christian religion also, and in the beginning was obligatorily and strictly carried out by all its followers. Only subsequently did it very quickly and suddenly entirely disappear from the Christian religion.
42.1003	“‘If you wish, my young friend, I will tell you in detail about the arising of this custom, and you will understand from it why a custom so good for the health and normal life of people was included in the Judaic religion, and since the Judaic doctrine was made the basis of the Christian religion, this custom also could not fail to be taken over and introduced into the process of the ordinary life of the followers of the Christian religion.
42.1003	“‘This custom which you call sooniat was first created and introduced into the Judaic religious doctrine by the Great Moses.
42.1003	“‘And why the Great Moses introduced this custom into the religion of the Judaic people I learned from a very ancient Chaldean manuscript.
42.1003-4	“‘It was said in this manuscript that when the Great Moses was the leader of the Judaic people and conducted them from the land of Egypt to the land of Canaan, he constated the fact during the journey that among the youths and children of the people confided to him from Above there was very widely spread the disease then called “Moordoorten,” which contemporary people call onanism.
42.1004	“‘It was further said in the manuscript that having constated this fact, the Great Moses was greatly perturbed and from then on began observing very closely in order to discover the causes of this evil and some means of uprooting it.
42.1004	“‘These researches of his led this incomparable sage later to write a book under the title of Tookha Tes Nalool Pan, which in contemporary language means “the quintessence of my reflections.”
42.1004	“‘With the contents of this remarkable book I also once happened to become acquainted.
42.1004	“‘At the beginning of the explanation about the disease Moordoorten it was said, among other things, that the human organism has been brought by Great Nature to such perfection that each and every organ has been provided with a means of defense against every external contingency; and hence that if any organ should function incorrectly in people, it must always be the people themselves who are to blame owing to their own established conditions of everyday life.
42.1004	“‘And concerning the causes themselves of the appearance of Moordoorten among children, it was said in Chapter VI, Verse xi of this incomparable book that this disease occurs in children for the following reasons:
42.1004	“‘Among the definite substances elaborated by the human organism and constantly thrown off by it as waste, there is a definite substance called “Kulnabo.”
42.1004-5	“‘This substance is in general elaborated in the organism of beings for the purpose of neutralizing other also definite substances necessary for the functioning of their sex organs, and it is formed and participates in the functioning of the said organs from the very beginning of the arising of the beings of both sexes, that is to say, from their infancy.
42.1005	“‘Great Nature has so arranged it that after its utilization the residue of this substance is discharged from the organism of boys at the place between the “Toolkhtotino” and the “Sarnuonino,” and in girls from the places between the “Kartotakhnian hills.”
42.1005	“‘The parts of the organism of boys located at the end of what is called the “genital member” and which are named in this incomparable book “Toolkhtotino” and “Sarnuonino” are named by contemporary medicine there “glans penis” and “praeputium penis”; and the “Kartotakhnian hills,” covering what is called the “clitoris” of girls, are called “labia majora” and “labia minora” or, as is said in common language, “the large and small obscene lips.”
42.1005	“‘For the substance “Kulnabo” contemporary medicine has no name at all, this independent substance being entirely unknown to it.
42.1005	“‘Contemporary terrestrial medicine has a name only for the general mass of those substances among which is also the substance Kulnabo.
42.1005	“‘And this total mass is called “Smegma,” a composition of entirely heterogeneous substances secreted by various what are called “glands” which have nothing in common with each other; as, for instance, the “grease” gland, the “Bartholinian” gland, the “Cowperian,” “Nolniolnian,” and others.
42.1005-6	“‘The separation and volatilization of these waste substances should in accordance with the providence of Great Nature be induced for the said places by means of all kinds of chance contacts and by various movements occurring in the atmosphere.
42.1006	“‘But, unforeseen by Nature, the clothing which people have invented for themselves prevents the said factors from freely effecting the separation and volatilization of these substances, with the result that this Kulnabo, remaining for a long time on these places, promotes the arising of perspiration; moreover, as this substance is in general the very best medium for the multiplication of what are called “bacteria,” which exist in the atmosphere as well as in what are called the “subjective spheres” of all kinds of things coming into direct contact with the children, there occurs from this multiplying there on the given parts of the organism of children a process called “itching.”
42.1006	“‘On account of this itching children begin, unconsciously at first, to rub or scratch these places. Later, as there are concentrated in these parts of the organism all the ends of the nerves created by Nature for the special sensation required for the completion of the sacred process Elmooarno, which normally arises in adult people at the end of what is called copulation, and as, especially at a certain period when according to the providence of Great Nature there proceeds in these organs of children a process of preparation for future sex functioning, they experience from this rubbing or scratching a certain peculiar pleasant sensation, they therefore begin intentionally—having instinctively realized from which of their actions this pleasant sensation is evoked in them—to rub these places even when there is no itching; and thus the ranks of the little “Moordoortenists” on the Earth are always increasing by leaps and bounds.
42.1006	“‘As regards just what measures the Great Moses took for eradicating that evil, I learned not from the aforementioned book Tookha Tes Nalool Pan, but from the contents of an also very ancient papyrus.
42.1007	“‘From the contents of this papyrus it could be clearly seen that the Great Moses gave practical effect to the thoughts set down on this question in the book Tookha Tes Nalool Pan, by creating for his people those two religious rites, one of which is called “Sikt ner chorn” and the other “Tzel putz kann.”
42.1007	“‘The sacred “Sikt ner chorn” was specially created for boys and the sacred “Tzel putz kann” for girls, and they were to be obligatorily performed on all children of both sexes.
42.1007	“‘The rite of “Sikt ner chorn,” for instance, was identical with your sooniat. By cutting what is called the “Vojiano” or the “frenum penis” of boys, the connection is severed between the head and the skin covering it, and thus there is obtained the free movement of this skin, or, as it is called, “praeputium penis.”
42.1007	“‘According to the information which has come down to us from ancient times and also according to our own common sense, it is plain that the Great Moses, who as we learn from another source was a very great authority on medicine, wished by this means to secure that the totality of substances accumulating in the said places might of itself be mechanically removed owing to all kinds of accidental contact and thus cease to become a factor for the arising of the mentioned maleficent itching. Concerning the vast learning of the Great Moses in the province of medicine, many diverse historical sources agree that he obtained his medical knowledge during his stay in Egypt as a pupil of the Egyptian high priests, to whom this knowledge had come down from their ancestors of the continent Atlantis, the first and last genuinely learned beings of the Earth, the members of the society then called Akhaldan.
42.1007-8	“‘The beneficial results of the customs then created by the Great Moses even now continue to be fairly visible in practice.
42.1008	“‘Concerning, for instance, the custom of circumcision in particular, I, being a good diagnostician and able to tell from one glance at a man’s face what disharmony he has in his organism, can safely say that this terrible children’s disease of onanism is scarcely ever found among those children upon whom this rite has been performed, whereas the children of those parents who fail to observe this custom are almost all subject to it.
42.1008	“‘The exceptions in this respect are only the children of those parents who are indeed cultured in the full sense of the word and who clearly understand that the future normal mentation of their children depends exclusively upon whether they do or do not contract this disease in their childhood or youth.
42.1008	“‘Such cultured parents know very well that if even once the sensation of the climax of what is called the “Ooamonvanosinian process” occurs in what is called the “nervous system” of their children before they reach majority, they will already never have the full possibility of normal mentation when they become adult; and hence it is that such cultured parents always consider it their first and chief duty towards their children to educate them in this respect.
42.1008	“‘Unlike most contemporary parents, they do not consider that the education of children consists in badgering them to learn by rote as much poetry as possible, composed by “Moordoortenist psychopaths,” or in teaching them to “click their heels well” before their acquaintances, in which accomplishments according to the notions of people of recent times the whole education of children unfortunately consists.
42.1008	“‘And so, my dear friend, and though very depraved yet nevertheless sympathetic young man.
42.1009	“‘These two rites were created by the Great Moses and introduced then into the ordinary life of the Judaic people in order to counteract that maleficent invention of clothes, thanks to which those factors were destroyed which were provided by Nature for the protection of these organs from the harmful action of the substances given off by them; and these two rites were transmitted from generation to generation, both to the followers of this Judaic religion themselves as well as to others who took over these useful rites almost unchanged. And it was only after “the death of the great King Solomon” that the rite “Tzel putz kann” ceased for some reason or other to be performed even by the followers of this Judaic religion, and only the rite “Sikt ner chorn” automatically continued to be performed and reached the contemporary representatives of that race.
42.1009	“‘And this custom together with many other ancient Judaic customs also reached the followers of the Christian religion, who at first observed it very strictly in their everyday life; but very soon, both this custom itself and even the information about its adoption among them similarly quickly disappeared from among the followers of this then still new religion.
42.1009	“‘Yes… my dear friend, if only the teaching of the Divine Jesus Christ were carried out in full conformity with its original, then the religion unprecedently wisely founded on it would not only be the best of all existing religions, but even of all religions which may arise and exist in the future.
42.1009	“‘Except for the custom of polygamy, there is nothing in the Mohammedan religion which was not also in the Judaic as well as in the Christian teachings.
42.1009-10	“‘The custom of polygamy, established on the basis of the scientific deductions of the then famous Arabian learned being ‘Naoolan El Aool,’ was introduced into the everyday life of people in general after the period of the founding of the Christian religion.
42.1010	“‘Your religion arose much later and its contents were intentionally restricted by its great creators, who had it in mind to lay particular stress on certain everyday customs.
42.1010	“‘They did this because at that time there were clearly manifest both the decline of the Christian religion and the disappearance in ordinary people of the capacity for contemplation, that is, for the state in which alone the truths indicated in the detailedly genuine religious teachings can be understood.
42.1010	“‘Having noticed all this, the great creators of the Mohammedan religion decided on the one hand to simplify the teaching itself and on the other hand to emphasize certain customs, so that the everyday life of the followers of this new teaching—who had lost the capacity for contemplation and consequently the possibility of understanding truths consciously—might at least mechanically flow more or less tolerably.
42.1010	“‘Just at that time, among other customs, they established and laid particular stress on the customs you mentioned of sooniat, abdest and polygamy, the beneficial results of which we can see even now in practice.
42.1010	“‘For example, as you yourself have justly observed, thanks to circumcision and ablution one rarely finds among the followers of this religion either onanism or certain venereal diseases, and thanks to polygamy we see among the followers of this religion such a reciprocal so to say psycho-organic maintenance of the foundation of family life as is almost entirely absent among the followers of the Christian religion.
42.1010-1	“‘Of the useful customs originally contained in the Christian religion and which were introduced by the creators of that religion into the life of its followers for the preservation of health and for the maintenance of the foundations of morality necessary for a happy life, nothing now remains except the custom of periodic fasting, that is, of abstaining at certain times of the year from the consumption of certain edible products.
42.1011	“‘And even this one surviving good custom is either already fading completely out of the ordinary life of the followers of this religion, or its observance is so changing year by year that no shock is obtained from it for the fasters, though it was just for that shock that this “fast” was established.
42.1011	“‘The changes now taking place in the process of this Christian custom of fasting are very characteristic and provide an excellent example for understanding how in general all the “good Christian customs” have little by little undergone change, until they have finally entirely ceased to exist.
42.1011	“‘A good illustration is the present-day observance of this fast by those called the Russian “Orthodox Christians.”
42.1011	“‘These Russian Orthodox Christians took their religion entirely from those called the “Orthodox Greeks,” from whom, together with many other Christian customs, this same custom of “fasting” also passed to them.
42.1011	“‘Most of the millions of these Russian Orthodox Christians still continue to fast as is said “rigorously,” in conformity with what is called the “orthodox code” now existing there.
42.1011	“‘But as to the manner of their fasting, one cannot help recalling the saying of our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin in such cases: “‘“Isn’t it all the same if I sing like a donkey as long as they call me a nightingale.”
42.1011-2	“‘The fasting of these Russian Orthodox Christians is just a case of this kind. “‘As long as they are called Christians and moreover Orthodox—even though they receive no shock whatever from the fast, is it not all the same?
42.1012	“‘As I have already said, these Russian Orthodox Christians even of the present time very strictly observe the seasons and the days of the fasts indicated in the aforesaid codes.
42.1012	“‘But as to what should and should not be consumed as food during a fast—just in that question “is buried the left paw of the curly-haired dog of the ex-Emperor Wilhelm.”
42.1012	“‘You will clearly understand how these contemporary Russian Orthodox Christians fast, if I repeat to you the exact words of one of these genuine Russian Orthodox Christians, spoken to me not long ago there in Russia.
42.1012	“‘I used to meet this Russian there on certain business and even became somewhat friendly with him and visited him in his home.
42.1012	“‘He was considered by those around him a very good Christian and the patriarchal father of a family; he was descended from what they call the “Old Believers.”’
42.1012	“Here, my boy, you might as well know that certain of the beings who compose this large group, Russia, are called by the rest Old Believers.
42.1012	“Old Believers is the name given to those Orthodox Christians whose ancestors several centuries ago declined to accept the new rules then laid down by somebody or other for Russian Orthodox Christians, but remained faithful followers of the previously existing rules also laid down by somebody or other, only a century or two before the given ‘religious schism’ such as usually occurs among them from time to time.
42.1012-3	“‘And so the said worthy Russian Old Believer’—I continued to the young Persian—‘once when we were dining together at his house in the company of several other Russians, also Orthodox Christians, turned to me and said:
42.1013	“‘“Eh! old dear!”
42.1013	“‘By the way, I must tell you that it is common among the beings of this group there, after the second glass of genuine Russian vodka, to call their acquaintances by various pet names such as “old dear,” “my Zapoopoonchik,” “my potbellied beauty,” “eh, my little brown jug,” and so on and so forth.
42.1013	“‘And so this worthy genuine Orthodox Christian, addressing me as “old dear,” said:
42.1013	“‘“Never mind, old dear! We shall soon be having Lent and then we shall feast together on real Russian dishes.
42.1013	“‘“To tell the truth, here in Russia we almost always eat the same things during the ‘meat’ periods.
42.1013	“‘“But it is quite a different story during the fasts, especially during Lent.
42.1013	“‘“Not a day passes but one is privileged to see some of the most tasty dishes.
42.1013	“‘“You know what, old dear?
42.1013	“‘“I made the other day a remarkably interesting ‘discovery’ on this subject.
42.1013	“‘“This new discovery of mine is miles above the discovery of that old codger Copernicus, who when he was once lying dead-drunk on the ground clearly sensed, it seems, that the Earth goes round.
42.1013	“‘“Ah! What a marvel! What a discovery! “‘“In our own mother Moscow alone, hundreds of thousands of such discoveries are probably made every day.
42.1013	“‘“No!… My discovery is a real one and exceedingly instructive and substantial.
42.1013-4	“‘“This discovery of mine is that we have all been complete fools and hopeless idiots ever to have imagined and been fairly convinced that for the host of good, varied, and most tasty dishes during Lent we are indebted to the famous art of our chefs and cooks.
42.1014	“‘“On the day, peculiarly blessed for those near to me, when I became worthy to understand this truth, that is to say, when our incomparable Doonyasha finally succeeded in placing within the layers of the pie for the ‘gromwell fish soup with turbot livers’ a series of secondary layers, I understood with my whole being that this had been a great mistake on our part.
42.1014	“‘“First I understood this myself, and afterwards I proved it to the whole of my household, that if we have so many varied and most tasty dishes during Lent, we are indebted only to our blessed and glorious fishes alone.
42.1014	“‘“During fasts and especially during Lent, our homes are made happy by the frequent visits of the: Most Honorable ‘Sturgeon’ and the Estimable ‘Sterlet’ and the Respected ‘Dried Sturgeon’ and the Ever-memorable ‘Turbot’ and Her Illustrious Highness The ‘Salmon’ and the Musical ‘White Sturgeon’ and the Serenely Plastic ‘Mackerel’ and the Eternally Angry ‘Pike’ and the Ever-demure ‘Gwyniad’ and the Leaping-alive ‘Trout’ and the Beauty ‘Trioshka’ and the Proud ‘Shamai’ and that Worthy Personality ‘Bream,’ and all our other like benefactors and protectors.
42.1014	“‘“Merely the names alone of these our givers of good and felicity are already for us the greatest gift of God.
42.1014	“‘“When we hear their names, our hearts almost leap within us.
42.1015	“‘“These names of theirs are not just names, but real music. Can one really compare the sounds of the music invented there by various Beethovenings and Chopinings, and other fashionable triflers, with the sounds of the names of these blessed fishes?
42.1015	“‘“Every time we hear the names of these glorious creations, a state of bliss flows within us and courses through our veins and nerves.
42.1015	“‘“Eh, Blessed Fishes, first created by our Creator! Have mercy on us and sustain us also in these ‘meat days.’ Amen.”
42.1015	“‘After this prayer, this worthy Orthodox Russian Christian drained a monster glass of genuine refined Russian vodka and stared fondly at a little statue of “Venus and Psyche” which stood nearby.
42.1015	“‘And indeed, my friend, almost every Russian Orthodox Christian has a similar idea of fasting and a similar attitude towards it.
42.1015	“‘During these “Christian fasts” which passed to them from the Orthodox Greeks, they all eat the flesh of fish.
42.1015	“‘It is not considered a “sin” among them to eat the flesh of fish, and they eat it heartily as a fast dish.
42.1015	“‘I personally find only one thing incomprehensible—from where did these Russian “sorry Orthodox” get the idea that during the Christian fasts, especially during Lent, the flesh of fish may be eaten?
42.1015	“‘I find it incomprehensible because the Orthodox Christians from whom they took this religion, namely, the Greeks, neither in the past nor in the present have ever eaten or do eat the flesh of fish during fasts.
42.1015	“‘Even the Greeks of today eat fish during Lent only on one day, and even then in accordance with the code of the Orthodox Church in memory of a day associated with the Divine Jesus Christ.
42.1015-6	“‘The result of a fast permitting the consumption of the flesh of fish not only gives no shock at all to the fasters, but is even directly contrary to what the Divine Jesus Christ himself intended and taught, and for which this custom was established by the great creators of this Christian religion.
42.1016	“‘In confirmation of what I have just told you, you might as well, my young friend, listen to what I once chanced to read about Christian fasting in an ancient Judaic-Essenian manuscript.
42.1016	“‘In this ancient Judaic-Essenian manuscript it was stated that the custom established for the followers of the teaching of Jesus Christ, of fasting at certain times of the year, was instituted long after His death, namely, in the two hundred and fourteenth year after His birth.
42.1016	“‘The custom of fasting was instituted and introduced into the Christian religion by the great secret Kelnuanian Council.
42.1016	“‘This secret Kelnuanian Council was convened by all the followers of the then still new teaching of Jesus Christ in the locality of Kelnuk, lying on the shores of the Dead Sea. Hence it is known in the history of the Christian religion as the Kelnuanian Council.
42.1016	“‘And it was held in secret because the followers of the teaching of Jesus Christ were then everywhere rigorously persecuted by the power-possessing people.
42.1016	“‘The power-possessing people persecuted them because they greatly feared that if people lived according to this teaching, then although they themselves, namely, the power-possessing people, could also live very well, yet all the motives for displaying their power would disappear, and thereby those shocks would cease, the satisfaction of which evoke the tickling of their inner god named “Self-Love.”
42.1016-7	“‘It was just during that Kelnuanian Council that its members first laid down the rule that the followers of the teaching of Jesus Christ should on certain days abstain from consuming certain edible products for food.
42.1017	“‘And the initial cause of the institution of this fast was the dispute at this Kelnuanian Council between two then famous learned men, namely, the great Hertoonano and the great Greek philosopher Veggendiadi.
42.1017	“‘The great Hertoonano was the representative of all the followers of the teaching of Jesus Christ settled on the shores of the Red Sea, while the philosopher Veggendiadi was the representative of all the then followers of that teaching in Greece.
42.1017	“‘The philosopher Veggendiadi was famous for his learning only in his own country, but Hertoonano was famous all over the Earth. He was considered the greatest authority on the laws of the inner organization of man, and also an authority on the science then called alchemy—not of course the alchemic science of which contemporary people have a notion and which they express by the same word.
42.1017	“‘The famous dispute between the great Hertoonano and Veggendiadi arose on the following occasion.
42.1017	“‘The philosopher Veggendiadi, it seems, occupied two days in affirming and proving that it was absolutely necessary to spread among all the followers of the teachings of Jesus the notion that to kill animals for the purpose of consuming their flesh for food was the greatest sin, and moreover that such flesh was very harmful to the health, and so on.
42.1017	“‘After the philosopher Veggendiadi, several other representatives ascended the rostrum and spoke for or against his case.
42.1017	“‘Finally, as this manuscript stated, the great Hertoonano with measured dignity slowly mounted the rostrum and spoke in the manner proper to him, clearly and calmly.
42.1018	“‘According to the text of this manuscript, he then spoke as follows:
42.1018	“‘“I fully concur in all the evidence and arguments set forth here by our Brother in Christ, the philosopher Veggendiadi.
42.1018	“‘“I for my part will even add to all he has said, that to cut short other lives merely to stuff one’s own belly is an infamy of infamies such as only man is capable of.
42.1018	“‘“Had I not also been interested in this question for many years and had I not reached certain entirely different definite conclusions, then after all that our Brother in Christ Veggendiadi has said here, I should not hesitate a moment but should urge and conjure you all not to delay until tomorrow, but without looking behind to hasten back to your towns, and there in the public squares to cry aloud: ‘Stop! Stop! People! Consume no more meat for food! This practice of yours is not only contrary to all the commandments of God, but is the cause of all your diseases.’
42.1018	“‘“As you see, I do not do this now. And I do not do so only because during my long years of unremitting study of this question I have, as I have already told you, arrived at an entirely different definite conclusion.
42.1018	“‘“Concerning the definite conclusion at which I have arrived I can now tell you only this, that it will never happen on the Earth that all people will profess one and the same religion. Hence, in addition to our Christian religion, other religions will always exist. And it is not possible to be certain that the followers of these other religions will also abstain from consuming meat.
42.1018-9	“‘“But if we cannot now be certain that at some time or other all people on Earth will abstain from meat, then we must now, as regards the consumption of meat, take quite other more practicable measures, because if one part of mankind consumes meat and the other part does not, then according to the results of my experimental investigations, the greatest of evils—than which nothing could be worse—would befall the people who did not consume meat.
42.1019	“‘“Namely, as my detailed experiments have shown me, among people who do not consume meat but who nevertheless live among those who do, the formation ceases of what is called ‘will power.’
42.1019	“‘“My experiments proved to me that although when they abstain from meat people’s bodily health improves, nevertheless, when such abstainers find themselves mixing with those who consume meat, their psychic state inevitably grows worse, in spite of the fact that the state of their organism may at the same time sometimes improve.
42.1019	“‘“Thus, a good result for people who abstain from meat can be obtained exclusively only if they live always in complete isolation.
42.1019	“‘“As regards the people who constantly consume meat or those products which contain the element called ‘Eknokh,’ although the appearance of the state of their organism undergoes no change, nevertheless their psyche, especially its chief feature which is sometimes designated by the general word the ‘character’ of man, gradually changes in regard to positiveness and morality for the worse, beyond all recognition.
42.1019	“‘“I must tell you that I made all these deductions from the experiments I was enabled to conduct over a period of many years, thanks to two good philanthropic men, namely, to the rich shepherd Alla Ek Linakh and his money, and to the scientist we all respect, El Koona Nassa, with his remarkable invention the apparatus ‘Arostodesokh.’
42.1019-20	“‘“By means of this said remarkable apparatus Arostodesokh I was enabled for several years to register daily the general state of the organism of all those thousands of people who lived under test conditions at the expense of the good shepherd Alla Ek Linakh.
42.1020	“‘“May our CREATOR multiply his flocks!
42.1020	“‘“Well then, when, thanks to these experimental researches of mine, I became clearly convinced that if people continue to consume meat for their food it will be very bad for them, and that on the other hand if only some of them should abstain, no good would come of this either, I thereafter devoted myself entirely for a time to finding out what could nevertheless be done for the future welfare of the majority of the people.
42.1020	“‘“At the outset I then established for myself two categorical propositions: the first, that people accustomed for so many centuries to consuming meat for their food would never, with their weak wills, be able to make themselves cease consuming it in order to overcome this criminal tendency of theirs; and the second, that even if people should decide not to eat meat and should in fact keep their decision for a certain time, and should even lose the habit of eating meat, they would nevertheless never be able to abstain from eating it for a sufficient length of time to acquire a total aversion to it. They would not be able to do so because never on the Earth will it occur that all people will have the same religion or form a single government, without which condition there can never exist common to all, any suggestive, prohibitive, penal, or other kind of compulsory influence, owing to which alone people possessing in general the property of being stimulated by example, aroused by envy, and influenced magnetically, might be enabled to keep forever a resolution once taken.
42.1020-1	“‘“Notwithstanding these two facts, incontestably clear in my conviction, I nevertheless, with these facts as the basis of my subsequent researches, persevered in my search for some possible way of escape from the unhappy situation confronting people.
42.1021	“‘“Of course all my further investigations on a large scale proceeded again with the aid of the inexhaustible wealth of the herdsman Alla Ek Linakh and the wonderful apparatus of the wise El Koona Nassa.
42.1021	“‘“The results of these last researches of mine made it clear to me that although in general people’s psyche does indeed deteriorate from the constant introduction into the organism of the substance Eknokh, yet this substance has a particularly harmful effect only at certain times of the year.
42.1021	“‘“So, my Brethren in Christ… from all I have said and chiefly from the experimental observations which I made on people daily during a whole year and which clearly showed me that the intensity of the harmful effect of the substance Eknokh decreases at certain times of the year, I can now confidently express my personal opinion that if the custom would be spread and confirmed, among the followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ, of abstaining during at least certain times of the year from the use of these products in the formations of which that substance Eknokh takes a special part, then if such a measure could conceivably be put into effect, it would bring the people a certain amount of benefit.
42.1021-2	“‘“As my numerous alchemic investigations have shown me, the substance Eknokh participates in the formation of the organisms of all lives, without exception, breeding on the surface of the Earth as well as within its different spheres, as, for instance, within the Earth, in the water, in the atmosphere, and so on. “‘“This substance is present also in everything which exists for the formation of the said organism, as for example in the vascular fluid of every pregnant female of every kind of life, and in such products as milk, eggs, caviar, etc….”
42.1022	“‘The ideas expressed by the great Hertoonano so astounded and agitated all the members of that Kelnuanian council that the commotion made it impossible for the great Hertoonano to continue speaking, and he was compelled to abandon his speech and descend from the rostrum.
42.1022	“‘It was further said in that manuscript that the day’s result was a unanimous decision on the part of the members of the Kelnuanian council to fix, with the help of the great Hertoonano, those times of the year when the substance Eknokh had more harmful effects on people, and to spread widely among the followers of Jesus Christ the custom of fasting at these times of the year—that is, of abstaining at certain times of the year from products containing the, for them, harmful substance Eknokh.
42.1022	“‘With this that Judaic-Essenian manuscript ended.
42.1022	“‘As you see from this, the creators of this custom had in view that the followers of that religion should abstain at the fixed times from those products which contain the substance very harmful for their health and particularly to their psyche.
42.1022	“‘But the Russian sorry Orthodox Christians, who consider themselves faithful followers of that great religion, also fast, but during their fast they eat the flesh of fish, that is to say, they eat just those organisms which contain according to the researches of the great Hertoonano that harmful substance Eknokh, precisely to guard them against which that wise and salutary custom was created.’
42.1022	“And with that, my boy, I then concluded my conversation with that sympathetic young Persian.
42.1022-3	“Concerning the destruction and transformation by contemporary beings of these good customs which were handed down from the ancient days of their wise ancestors, our incomparable Mullah Nassr Eddin has also a very apt and wise sentence.
42.1023	“‘Ekh! People, people! Why are you people? If only you were not people, you might perhaps be clever.’
42.1023	“A favorite saying of the American Uncle Sam also does very well to define the same idea. “It is said that when Uncle Sam from America happens to have drunk a little more gin than usual, he always says during a pause: ‘When nothing’s right—only then, all is right.’
42.1023	“But for myself I will only say, in this case ‘Wicked Moon.’
42.1023	“At any rate, my dear boy, I must admit that certain customs existing there which have reached the contemporary favorites of yours from remote antiquity are exceedingly good for the ordinary existence of the beings of certain communities there.
42.1023	“These customs are good because they were invented and introduced into the process of the existence of beings by those three-brained beings there, who brought the perfecting of their Reason up to so high a degree as unfortunately none of your contemporary beings there any longer attains.
42.1023	“The contemporary people-beings are able to create only such customs as make the quality of their psyche still worse.
42.1023	“For instance, they have recently made a practice of always, here, there, and everywhere dancing a certain dance called the ‘fox trot.’
42.1023-4	“At the present time this fox trot is indulged in everywhere at all times of the day and night not only by young and still unformed beings who do not even begin to be aware of the sense and aim of their arising and existence, but also by those whose faces clearly express—as it can be constated by every normal more or less sensible three-brained being—that in respect of their duration of existence, as our teacher would say, ‘not only have they one foot in the grave but even both.’ The point, however, is that the process of the experience in a being during the said fox trot is exactly similar to that which proceeds during that children’s disease which the Great Moses called ‘Moordoorten.’
42.1024	“The disease which the Great Moses devoted half his existence to eradicating from among children, a host of your contemporary favorites of responsible age have, almost deliberately, resurrected again and spread not only among children and the general mass of adults but also even among the aged as well.
42.1024	“These good customs for ordinary existence reached your contemporary favorites from ancient three-brained beings of your planet, and very many now still exist there among the beings of various communities of the continent Asia.
42.1024	“Certain of these customs existing there now, appear when first witnessed as absurdly strange and barbaric, but on a close and impartial investigation of the inner meaning of any of these customs, one can see how skillfully there has been incorporated in them for the people who follow them one or another moral or hygienic benefit.
42.1024	“Take, as an example, one of the most seemingly senseless of the customs there—one existing among a certain tribe of Asiatic beings called ‘Kolenian Loors’ or ‘Kolenian gypsies’ dwelling between Persia and Afghanistan, and which other beings there call ‘Gypsy self-fumigation.’ “Exactly the same end is served by this seemingly stupid custom as by the Persian custom of ablution or abdest. This gypsy tribe is regarded as the lowest and filthiest of all the tribes existing on the Earth; and indeed they are so filthy that their clothes are always swarming with the insects called lice.
42.1025	“Their custom of ‘self-fumigation’ also serves by the way to destroy these insects.
42.1025	“Although the men-beings of that tribe are indeed exceedingly filthy, yet not only do no venereal diseases exist among them, but they do not even know and have never heard that such diseases can be contracted.
42.1025	“In my opinion, this is the outcome entirely of that custom of theirs, which some ancient clever being there invented for the welfare of the people of his epoch, and which passing afterwards from generation to generation, chanced to reach these contemporary filthy beings of the tribe of Kolenian gypsies.
42.1025	“For this rite of self-fumigation every family of gypsies has also what is called an, ‘Ateshkain,’ that is, a stool of special form which they regard as sacred; and this whole ritual of theirs they perform with the aid of this sacred stool.
42.1025	“Every family of these gypsies has also what is called a ‘Tandoor,’ that is, a special kind of earth pit, such as is found in the houses almost everywhere on the continent of Asia and which serves as a hearth on which they usually bake bread and prepare food.
42.1025	“In these Tandoors in Asia they burn chiefly what is called ‘Keeziak’—a fuel composed of the dung of quadruped animals.
42.1025	“The rite itself consists in this, that when the family of these gypsies returns home in the evening they first remove all their clothing and shake them in this Tandoor.
42.1025	“It is almost always hot in this Tandoor because the dung burns very slowly and the ashes formed around the Keeziak keep the fire burning for a very long time.
42.1025-6	“By the way, it is interesting to remark that when these gypsies shake their clothes in the Tandoor a highly interesting phenomenon results from this action of theirs; namely, the lice in their clothes crawl out and, falling into the fire, explode before burning, and the various sounds of the explosion of these lice, large and small, produces altogether a surprising ‘musical symphony.’
42.1026	“From the said explosion of the lice, a hearer sometimes has the impression that somewhere not far off, firing is going on from several dozen of their what are called machine guns.
42.1026	“Well then, after these ‘worthy gypsies’ have shaken their no less worthy clothing, they proceed with the sacred ritual.
42.1026	“First of all they solemnly and with a certain ceremony lower their sacred family stool into the Tandoor and in turn, according to age, they step into the Tandoor and stand upon it.
42.1026	“The sacred stool consists simply of a small board to which four iron legs are fixed; and by this means it is possible to stand in the Tandoor without burning one’s feet in the hot ashes.
42.1026	“As each member of the family stands on that sacred stool, all the other members of the family sing their sacred canticle, while the one standing upon this stool slowly and solemnly, bending the knees, lowers and raises himself and at the same time recites prayers. The custom requires that he should do this until every part of his sex organs has been warmed by the Tandoor.
42.1026	“A second custom, very similar and seemingly just as stupid, I saw among the people of another small tribe, called ‘Toosooly Kurds,’ dwelling in Transcaucasia not far from Mt. Ararat.
42.1026-7	“This tribe is not filthy as is the tribe of the Kolenian gypsies. On the contrary, from their daily bathing in the river Arax and existing mostly in the fresh air—being chiefly shepherds—not only are the people of this tribe very clean but they even do not give off the specific odor which is peculiar to people of almost all the small tribes which populate this great Asia.
42.1027	“Each family of this tribe has its own what is called ‘hut,’ which serves as a dwelling and for the reception of guests—as the custom of visiting one another is highly developed among the separate families of this tribe.
42.1027	“In each hut it is customary for them to have, in the corner of the front section, what is called a ‘sacred Mungull,’ that is a hearth on which a fire of smoldering charcoal or of the said Keeziak is constantly kept, and near each such sacred Mungull there hangs a small wooden box called ‘Ktulnotz’ which is always kept supplied with the roots of a certain plant.
42.1027	“The ‘rite of self-fumigation’ consists in this, that every member of the family and every guest of either sex, before going into the principal section of the hut, is obliged to enter this sacred Mungull in order as they say to purify himself from the influence of those evil spirits by which man is surrounded when he is busy with honest work.
42.1027	“And this purification is carried out in the following manner:
42.1027	“Each person going into the hut must approach and take a few roots out of the hanging box and throw them into the fire, and afterwards, in the smoke from the burning of these roots, fumigate his sex organs. In the case of a woman, she simply spreads her skirt and stands over the Mungull! If it is a man, he either takes off or lets down his trousers and also stands over the said smoke.
42.1027	“Only after such a purification can they enter the chief room; otherwise, as they affirm, not only will evil influences be brought into the house, but owing to these accumulated influences, a man might contract very evil diseases.
42.1027-8	“These sacred Mungulls are usually screened by the very best ‘Djedjims,’ that is, by a special fabric woven only by the Kurds.
42.1028	“I repeat, my boy, there exist at the present time on that continent Asia a great many similar customs.
42.1028	“I personally saw hundreds of them which seemed at first sight no less strange and barbarous but, upon a serious and impartial study of their hidden meaning, always revealed one and the same aim, namely, either the destruction of the noxious carriers of various diseases, or the strengthening of moral shame.
42.1028	“But on the continent of Europe I scarcely found a single custom specially created either for purposes of hygiene or for instilling morality among the masses.
42.1028	“It cannot be denied that various customs also exist on the continent of Europe, even thousands of them, but they are all established only in order that beings may have the possibility of pleasing each other, or to conceal the real state of affairs, that is to say, to disguise the undesirable forms of one’s exterior—undesirable of course only according to subjective understanding—and to conceal the nullity of one’s own inner significance.
42.1028	“These customs existing there progressively increase year by year the ‘duality’ of the personality and mind of the beings there.
42.1028-9	“But the principal evil lies in this, that at the present time there, all the ‘Oskianotznel’ of the rising generation, or the education of the children, is rendered and reduced only to the adoption of these innumerable customs which exist among them and engender only immorality. Hence it is that year by year the data crystallized in them by tens of centuries for the Being ‘of an image of God,’ and not simply, as they themselves would say, ‘of an animal,’ are on the one hand decrystallized, and on the other hand their psyche is already becoming almost such as our dear Teacher defines by the words: “‘There is everything in him except himself.’
42.1029	“And indeed, my boy, owing to the complete absence of good patriarchal customs and to their notorious ‘education,’ the contemporary beings of that continent have already become completely transformed into what are called ‘automatons’ or living mechanical puppets.
42.1029	“At the present time any one of them can become animated and manifest himself outwardly, only when there are accidentally pressed the corresponding what are called ‘buttons’ of those impressions already present in him, which he mechanically perceived during the whole of his preparatory age.
42.1029	“But unless these buttons are pressed, the beings there are in themselves only, as again our highly esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin says, ‘pieces of pressed meat.’
42.1029	“It must without fail be remarked here that one of the principal causes of this state of the beings of contemporary civilization is also that same onanism of theirs, a disease which in recent times has come to be almost epidemic there, and which is in its turn also a consequence again of their education of children, thanks to a certain maleficent idea established among its rulers and which is already, as it were, an inseparable part of the consciousness of everybody, namely, their maleficent idea that ‘to speak to children about the sex question is absolutely improper.’
42.1029	“And further, I again emphasize that just this, for their naïve reason, trifling idea, the significance of which none of them takes into consideration—considering it simply as what they call a question of ‘decency’ or ‘indecency’—is the chief cause of their having come to this phenomenal so to say ‘psychic mechanicality.’
42.1029	“In the totality of definite understandings which they call ‘education,’ there is even a certain section which elucidates and exactly indicates just what is, as they express it, ‘decent’ and what is ‘indecent’ to say to children.
42.1030	“You must know that at the end of my last sojourn on the surface of your planet, I had to make this maleficent terrestrial question the subject of my special observation and even to study it in great detail.
42.1030	“To know approximately what results the terrestrial contemporary education of children leads to, I will tell you of just that one occurrence which was the first cause of my subsequent special interest in the question of this terrestrial misunderstanding.
42.1030	“Although this occurrence took place in the large community of Russia, yet nevertheless this ‘story’ which I shall now tell you is very characteristic and gives a very good picture in general of the education of the children of their contemporary civilization.
42.1030	“It is characteristic because in this large community Russia also, the contemporary responsible beings, especially the beings of what is called the upper ‘ruling class,’ educate their children exactly as the contemporary responsible beings of the other communities breeding on the continents of Europe and America educate theirs.
42.1030	“My account of this occurrence, which evoked in me an impulse of interest to acquaint myself specially with the question of the terrestrial education of children, I shall preface with a story of something that occurred just previously to this and which admirably illustrates the significance of this education of theirs and was also, so to say, a ‘link’ in my gradually becoming interested in this question.
42.1030	“I happened once to exist continuously for several months in the capital of this community—in the city of St. Petersburg.
42.1030	“During my stay there I became acquainted with an elderly couple.
42.1030-1	“The man was what is called a ‘senator’ and his wife was a ‘society lady’ and a patroness of several ‘welfare institutions.’
42.1031	“I used to visit them often at their home and enjoyed playing chess with this senator—as is customary there among what are called ‘respectable people.’
42.1031	“This elderly couple had several daughters.
42.1031	“All the elder daughters were already settled, that is, married; only their youngest daughter, twelve years old, remained at home.
42.1031	“As this couple had no further responsibilities concerning their other daughters, they decided to give this youngest daughter of theirs the very best education according to the notions of that time, and for this purpose they placed her in a special ‘boarding school,’ a higher educational establishment called an ‘institute.’
42.1031	“This youngest daughter of theirs came home only on Sundays and for the chief holidays, and once a week on special days her father and mother used to visit her at the boarding school.
42.1031	“I was almost always with them during the holidays, and I met this charming as yet unspoiled girl and sometimes even took walks with her in the neighboring what is called ‘park.’
42.1031	“During these walks we either joked or she told me about her lessons and her new impressions.
42.1031	“During these meetings and conversations, a tie, something like friendship, grew up little by little between us.
42.1031	“She was very quick in her perceptions and manifestations, or as your favorites themselves define such persons from among themselves, an ‘alert and thoughtful’ girl.
42.1031	“My acquaintance, this senator, was sent on a certain as they say there ‘inspection,’ somewhere far off in Siberia.
42.1031-2	“His wife decided to accompany him, for the senator was suffering from what is called ‘liver trouble’ and constantly needed care; but they could not make this joint trip because of their youngest daughter, since there would be no one to visit her at the institute and to take her home during the holidays.
42.1032	“So, one morning, the parents—these elderly acquaintances of mine—came to see me at my apartment and asked me if I would agree to take their place with their youngest daughter during their absence, to visit her every week at the institute and to take her home with me for the holidays.
42.1032	“I, of course, at once agreed to this proposal of theirs and when, very soon after, the senator and his wife left for Siberia I began punctually to fulfill the obligations taken upon myself in regard to their daughter who had by that time become a pet of mine.
42.1032	“Upon my first visit to this educational establishment which existed specially for the education of children, I noticed a certain strange thing which also served as one of the causes of my subsequent observations and studies of the consequences on your contemporary favorites of that ‘maleficence’ invented by them themselves.
42.1032	“On the day of my visit to this, as they call it, ‘genteel institution,’ there were many visitors in the reception room where the meetings of the parents or guardians with their children or wards actually took place.
42.1032-3	“One or two parents or guardians had only just come in, others were already talking with their children or foster children, others were awaiting the arrival of their children and all their attention was fixed on the door through which the pupils of that establishment usually entered. I also, after I had come into this reception room and had explained to the inspectress on duty who it was I wished to see, sat down to wait for my chance foster child. While waiting I looked around. All the pupils of this ‘genteel establishment’ were dressed alike and all wore their hair similarly braided in two braids, the ends of which, tied with ribbons, hung down their backs.
42.1033	“What struck my eye was a certain peculiarity in these ribbons and braids. On some of the pupils these ribbons simply hung down the back, but on others, although they also hung down the back, yet the ends of these ribbons were tied together in a certain way.
42.1033	“On the very next holiday, when I took my foster child home, talking with her over what is called a samovar, I asked her:
42.1033	“‘Tell me, Sonia, please, why, although the pupils of your institute dress alike in everything else, there is that peculiarity in the ends of their braids?’ She immediately blushed and without answering this question of mine stared pensively into her tea, and only after a certain time nervously replied:
42.1033	“‘It’s not just a simple thing among us. Although this is our big institute secret, yet I cannot help telling it to you, my friend, as I am quite sure that you will not give away this big institute secret of ours to anybody.’
42.1033	“She proceeded to tell me frankly as follows:
42.1033	“‘The manner of tying our ribbons was intentionally devised by the pupils so that they could recognize one another; that is, know to which club a pupil belongs, and at the same time so that the class teachers and supervisors, and in general anyone not a pupil of the institute, should not know or discover the secret.
42.1033	“‘All the pupils of our institute are divided into two categories, one belongs to what is called the “men’s club” and the other to what is called the “women’s club,” and we recognize one another just by the manner of tying these ribbons.’
42.1033	“After this she explained to me in detail in just what the difference between these two clubs lies.
42.1033-4	“She said that as a rule all new arrivals in the institute were at first members of the women’s club, and only afterwards, if any pupil proved to be daring toward the teachers or in general showed herself very active in some way or other, then by the common consent of all the pupils she was enrolled as a member of the men’s club and from that moment tied the ends of the ribbons of her two braids together.
42.1034	“‘We usually make the meeting place of our club a spare classroom or dormitory, but more often the toilets.
42.1034	“‘The members of the men’s club have in general the following privileges: they have the right to choose and to command as many as they like and whom they please of the pupils who are members of the women’s club; and these latter are obliged always to gratify every wish of the given member of the men’s club and do their utmost to make her stay in our boarding school easy for her, as, for example, to make her bed in the morning, copy her lessons, share with her the presents sent from home, and so on and so forth.
42.1034	“‘The chief occupation in the clubs consists of reading together forbidden books procured by one of the pupils. They chiefly read one very rare manuscript, obtained with money raised by a general institute subscription, wherein is expounded in detail the whole of the teaching of the famous poetess Sappho.’
42.1034	“I must tell you, my boy, that Sappho was the name of a certain Greek poetess who first discovered there on your planet the ‘way to real happiness’ for many women of the Greek-Roman as well as of the contemporary civilization.
42.1034-5	“This great creator of ‘women’s happiness’ had her dwelling place on the island of ‘Lesbos,’ from which word originated the title of those women who have already become worthy to understand and to actualize during the process of their existence the teaching of this remarkable woman, and who at the present time are called ‘Lesbians.’
42.1035	“This foster child of mine, who had chanced to become my enlightener upon the subtleties of the psyche of the beings of the female sex of your planet, further explained to me that every pupil of the institute who was a member of the men’s club could choose for herself as many partners as she wished for the common pastime; this of course proceeding in full accordance with the teachings of the poetess Sappho.
42.1035	“I think that thanks merely to this one fact which I have related to you out of thousands of other observations of mine, you can already clearly picture to yourself that such a phenomenal ugliness could not exist among the rising generation if the notion was not prevalent there that it is exceedingly ‘indecent’ to talk to children about the ‘sex question.’
42.1035	“This notion of ‘decency’ came down to contemporary civilization by inheritance from the beings of the epoch called the ‘Middle Ages.’
42.1035	“These candidates for Hasnamusses of the Middle Ages, having been among the chief agents in the destruction of the real meaning of the teaching of the Divine Teacher Jesus Christ, then also devised and introduced into everyday existence, as a regulation, the maleficent invention which they called ‘bon ton.’ And this maleficent invention then became so strongly fixed in the psyche of the majority that it became organized for them and began to pass by heredity from generation to generation, so that now your contemporary favorites, who have become completely weak-willed, are unable, however they may try, to overcome such an abnormal psychic fixation as, in the given case, the notion of the indelicacy of talking to their children about the ‘sex question.’
42.1036	“What? Talk to one’s children about ‘sex’? Is that not indecent?
42.1036	“At the present time the people of contemporary civilization talk to their children and teach them for their edification only what has been invented or is being invented in the manuals of various candidates for ‘Hasnamuss individuals’ under the aforesaid title of ‘bon ton.’
42.1036	“And since in all these manuals it seems that it is very indecent to talk about the ‘sex question’ and in the case of children even ‘immoral,’ then even if contemporary people see their favorite son or daughter rotting, they simply cannot, and even as I have already told you, with all their mental wish dare not, explain frankly to their children the harm and sin of these criminal habits.
42.1036	“And so, my boy, when my good acquaintances the senator and his wife had returned from Siberia and I was free of the obligations I had taken upon myself in regard to my pet, their youngest daughter, there just then occurred the aforementioned event which served as the beginning of my special observations and studies of this terrestrial contemporary question, maleficent also to themselves.
42.1036	“This sorrowful event occurred there in St. Petersburg itself in just such another educational institution and consisted in the following. The headmistress of this institution, finding that one of her pupils had behaved contrary to their famous regulations of ‘decency,’ reprimanded her so harshly and so unfairly that as a result the accused and her friend, two growing girls with the germs of data for future normal women-mothers, hanged themselves.
42.1036	“My investigations into this case elicited the following:
42.1036-7	“It appeared that among the pupils of the mentioned educational institution was a certain young girl Elizabeth who had been brought by her parents from a distant estate to the capital in order that there, in a special higher educational institution, she might receive this same contemporary ‘education.’
42.1037	“Here in St. Petersburg in this said boarding school, it happened that this thirteen-year-old Elizabeth became great friends with another young girl, Mary, who like herself was not yet developed.
42.1037	“The same year on the day of the ‘spring holiday’ or as it is otherwise called there ‘May Day,’ all the pupils of that higher educational institution were taken according to custom for an excursion into the country, and these two ‘bosom friends’ happened to be in different groups which were walking at some distance from each other.
42.1037	“Out in the fields Elizabeth chanced to see a certain ‘quadruped animal’ called there a ‘bull,’ and very much wishing for some reason or other that her bosom friend Mary should not miss seeing this dear quadruped animal, she shouted, ‘Mary! Mary! Look, there goes a bull!’
42.1037	“No sooner had she uttered the word ‘bull’ than all the, as they are called, ‘governesses’ swarmed round this Elizabeth and flung at her all kinds of cruel preachings.
42.1037	“How could one utter the word ‘bull’!! Does not that quadruped animal occupy itself with what no well-brought-up person would on any account speak of and still less a pupil of such a ‘genteel institution’?
42.1037	“While the governesses were persecuting this poor Elizabeth, all the pupils of the institute gathered around and the headmistress herself came up, who, having learned what it was all about, began in her turn to reproach Elizabeth. “‘Shame on you!’ she said. ‘To utter such a word which is considered so very, very indecent.’
42.1037	“At last Elizabeth could contain herself no longer and she asked amid her tears:
42.1038	“‘What then ought I to have called that quadruped animal if it actually was a bull?’
42.1038	“‘The word,’ said the headmistress, ‘by which you call that animal, any of the scum call it. But you, since you are here in the institute, are not of the scum; so you should always find out how to call indecent things by names which do not sound indecent to the ear.
42.1038	“‘For instance, when you saw that indecent animal and wanted your friend to look at it, you might have shouted, “Mary, look, there goes a beefsteak,” or “Mary, look yonder, there goes something that is very good to eat when we are hungry,” and so forth.’
42.1038	“From all this poor Elizabeth became so nervous, especially as this ‘reprimanding’ took place in the presence of all her friends, that she could not restrain herself and cried out with all her might:
42.1038	“‘Oh, you wretched old maids! Striped hobgoblins! Spawn of deepest hell! Because I called a thing by its name, you immediately begin to suck my blood. Be thrice damned!!!!!’
42.1038	“Having said these last words, she fell as they say there ‘in a faint,’ followed in turn by the fainting of the headmistress herself and of several ‘class mistresses’ and ‘governesses.’
42.1038	“The ‘class mistresses’ and ‘governesses’ of this ‘genteel institution’ who had not fainted then raised such a ‘hubbub’ as really only occurs at what is called the market where ‘Jewesses’ from the town of Berdichev exclusively bargain.
42.1038-9	“The result of it all was that when the ‘class mistresses’ and ‘governesses’ who had fainted, revived, they then and there held in the field under the presidency of this same headmistress of the institution, what is there called a ‘teachers’ council,’ by whose sentence it was decided immediately on return to town to telegraph Elizabeth’s father to come for his daughter, as she was expelled from the institute with loss of right to enter any other similar institute in the Russian Empire.
42.1039	“The same day, an hour after the pupils were sent home, one of what are called the ‘porters’ of the institute happened to find in the ‘woodshed’ that two as yet undeveloped growing future mothers were hanging by ropes fastened to the beams.
42.1039	“In Mary’s pocket was found a note with the contents: “‘Together with my dear Elizabeth, I do not wish to live any longer with such nonentities as you, and I am going with her to a better world.’
42.1039	“This case then so interested me that I began, of course privately, to investigate psychoanalytically from every aspect the psyche of all the parties in this sad story. I partly elucidated among other things that at the moment of the manifestation of her violent outburst, there was in the psyche of poor Elizabeth what is called there ‘chaos.’
42.1039	“And indeed it would have been astonishing if such a ‘chaos’ had not been in the psyche of this as yet unselfconscious thirteen-year-old girl, who before this miserable event had always lived on her father’s big estate, where she had always seen and felt the same richness of nature as on that day in the field near the city of St. Petersburg.
42.1039	“She had been brought to that stifling noisy city of St. Petersburg and had been kept for a long time in an improvised box. Suddenly she had found herself in an environment where every fresh impression evoked all kinds of memories of former pleasantly perceived sensations.
42.1039-40	“On your planet, during what is called ‘early spring’ there are indeed sometimes pictures to the charm of which it is difficult not to yield. “Picture to yourself the following: afar, cows are seen at pasture; near, at one’s feet snowdrops shyly peep out from the earth; close to “one’s ear, a little bird flies by; to the right is heard the twittering of quite an unknown bird; on the left one’s sense of smell is quickened by the perfume of some also unknown flower.
42.1040	“In short, at such moments as these, in the beings there, especially in one so young as Elizabeth, finding themselves, after a long period of oppressive existence in a suffocating city, in the midst of such a rich abundance of all kinds of unaccustomed impressions, the mental associations evoked from a natural being-joy would naturally arise of themselves from every external thing perceived.
42.1040	“Elizabeth must have felt this especially strongly, having lived, as I have already said, before the institute, on her father’s large estate which lay far from the already exceedingly abnormal conditions of city vanities.
42.1040	“Thanks to this, every impression newly perceived by her would naturally call up previous childhood memories, each connected in its turn with various other pleasant incidents.
42.1040	“So it is not difficult to picture to yourself that the sudden appearance of that quadruped animal called ‘bull,’ such as she had seen at home on the farm and which had enjoyed there the affection of all the children, who secretly even took it bread from the table, was to this as yet unformed impressionable young girl a shock for the corresponding associations under the influence of which, she, being full of a feeling of sincere happiness still unspoiled by the abnormally established conditions of being-existence, instantly wished to share her happiness with her bosom friend who was some distance off, and shouted to her to look at that dear bull.
42.1040	“Now I ask you, how should she have called this quadruped being, since it actually was a bull?
42.1040-1	“Really, ‘beefsteak’?—as advised by the ‘esteemed’ headmistress of this ‘esteemed higher educational institution,’ which existed there specially for the ‘education of children’ according to the barbarous system of theirs existing there to their misfortune also at the present time.
42.1041	“As you see, my boy, intending to tell you a little more about the three-brained beings who have interested you and who breed on that continent of North America, I have, by the way, said a great deal in general about the three-brained beings arising and existing on all the continents of that peculiar planet.
42.1041	“I don’t think you will have any grievance against me for this, since you have at the same time managed to learn many more facts elucidating the details of their strange psyche.
42.1041	“Concerning specially what is called the ‘degree of degeneration’ of the common presences of those who compose this contemporary large group on the continent America, in respect of the loss of possibilities for the acquisition of Being nearer to the normal Being of three-brained beings in general, I can tell you something somewhat consoling for them, namely, that in my opinion there remains among them the largest percentage of beings in whose presences the said possibility is not entirely lost.
42.1041	“Although this new group is composed of and still continues to be increased by three-brained beings breeding on the continent of Europe, where for such beings with the aforementioned possibilities it is already necessary, particularly in recent times, as our wise Teacher Mullah Nassr Eddin says on such occasions, ‘to look specially with the most powerful electric arc lamps,’ nevertheless, I repeat, in this large group there is a larger percentage of such beings than on the continent of Europe.
42.1041-2	“It seems to me that this has happened because there have migrated there, and still now migrate from the continent of Europe, beings chiefly from among what are called the ‘simple beings’ who are not, so to say, the ‘hereditary offspring’ of the European beings belonging to the ‘ruling caste’ in whom, thanks to transmission by inheritance from generation to generation during long centuries of predisposition to Hasnamussian properties, there is at the present time so much of what is called ‘inner swagger’ that it would never permit them to blend with the general mass in order to strive together with common efforts to become such three-brained beings as they should be.
42.1042	“Thanks only to the fact that among the three-brained beings breeding on that continent there were only very few of the ‘offspring of the ruling caste’ and that the general mass of beings was in itself a medium in which it was still possible for ‘our brother’ to exist and not be under the influence of those local radiations which are formed owing to surrounding beings and which act harmfully on what are called the ‘subjectively natural inner forces’ of every being—I was therefore able during my stay among them to rest as I desired.
42.1042	“Now, my boy, that I have spent so much of my time explaining the meaning of all the various innovations and all the renewals of former pernicious customs—which had already many times existed on their planet—among the beings of this big new contemporary grouping, and which have already at the present time become, in the objective sense, harmful not only for them themselves, but also for all the other three-brained beings who have interested you and who breed on quite other continents, it is therefore in my opinion already unavoidably necessary for a, so to say, ‘closing chord’ to initiate you also into those of my thoughts which began in my mentation on the last day of my sojourn among them in the city of New York and which ended on the steamer as it was moving away from that continent toward the East.
42.1042-3	“On that day I was sitting in one of the singular cafes there named ‘Childs,’ situated at what is called ‘Columbus Circle,’ awaiting the beings from the continent Europe who had accompanied me to this continent, to go with them to the dock of the outgoing steamer, and I was looking out of the window at the various passing beings from among the inhabitants of that city, who although according to automatized perception were distinguishable on that day in exterior appearance—of course chiefly due to the usage, recently fixed in them more than in any beings of any other continents, of becoming ‘slaves’ to always that same maleficent terrestrial invention which they call ‘fashion’—nevertheless somehow seemed to me, in respect of their inner content, particularly alike.
42.1043	“Observing them, I thought just about the final deduction I had made the day before, that in the present period of the flow of the Heropass in the common planetary process of the ordinary existence of those in general strange three-brained beings, the source of the intensive manifestation of that already long-established particularity of the general totality of their strange psyche, which one of the highest sacred Individuals once characterized by the words ‘the periodic fundamental source of the issuing of new causes of abnormality,’ is represented just by the beings of this new grouping.
42.1043-4	“The shock for the beginning of associations and for my further active meditations this time, was the constatation I happened to make of the fact that everything constituting what is called the ‘totality of the subjective appearance’ of each one of them—such as clothes, gestures, manners, and in general all the established usages which all three-brained beings acquire in the ordinary process of their collective existence—is a totally exact imitation exclusively only of all that exists among the beings of various other independent groupings breeding on other continents, an imitation of just that which is considered by the free beings of these other groupings, that is to say, by those beings among them who have already experienced and consequently been disappointed in everything the process of ordinary existence can give, as unworthy of manifestation by beings similar to them.
42.1044	“This accidental constatation of mine at once very much astonished me, chiefly because I was already informed from every aspect and wholly convinced that in the present period everywhere on this planet the beings of almost all the other groupings, those recently formed as well as those which are at a very advanced stage of their community, imitate to the full all the innovations of the beings of this still quite recently formed grouping and enthusiastically adopt these innovations in the process of their ordinary existence, and at the same time, all the external manifestations of the beings of this new grouping and consequently the ‘inner subjective significance’ which engenders these external manifestations, consist only of that which, as I have already said, has become to the great grief of the free beings of these other independent groupings fixed and inherent in the common presences of the ordinary beings of these groupings.
42.1044	“In consequence of this unexpected constatation of mine, there then arose in me a highly intensive impulse of curiosity to make clear to myself the logical causes which had engendered this terrestrial incongruity.
42.1044-5	“All that day, while sitting in this Childs awaiting the arrival of the beings from the continent of Europe who had accompanied me, and while riding in the ‘motor taxi’ and also while on the boat itself, I continued to ponder very actively the solution of this question, of course appearing to strangers as an automatic observer of everything proceeding around me; and in the ability outwardly to appear such, in order to resemble them in this respect, and thus not to be, so to say, conspicuous, or as they say there ‘not to strike the eye,’ I became there on the Earth ideally or as they would say ‘artistically’ expert.
42.1045	“Sitting on the deck looking at the twinkling of the lights on the shore of this continent gradually growing fainter as the steamer moved away towards the East, and pondering over and logically comparing all the facts ensuing one from the other, I, as a result, made it almost entirely clear to myself just why and how the said incongruity could have arisen on this ill-fated planet.
42.1045	“At the beginning of these ponderings of mine, I established many facts which had enabled this to arise, but afterwards, when I began successively to exclude those which inevitably ensue—as is done in such cases—then as a result one fact became clear to me, which, though at first glance insignificant, astonished even me and which as it turned out was, all the time, and still is, the originating cause of this abnormality there.
42.1045	“And that is to say, it turned out that owing to the consequences of that same famous ‘education’ of theirs, so many times mentioned by me, there inevitably arise in the common presence of each of them in general during his age of preparation for responsible existence, to whatever independent group he may belong, data for the definite conviction that in the former epochs on their planet the beings similar to them had never perfected themselves to that Reason to which their contemporaries have attained and in which they can still continue to perfect themselves.
42.1045-6	“When my thoughts were concentrated on this and I began to recall my former impressions concerning this question, those consciously and also those incidentally and automatically perceived during my previous observations of them in general, I gradually established that all your favorites, particularly in the last thirty centuries, had indeed become convinced during all their responsible existence that their contemporary what they call ‘civilization’ is simply the result of the direct continuation of the development of the Reason which began at the very commencement of the arising of three-brained beings on their planet.
42.1046	“And so when the beings, their contemporaries of any grouping, owing to the formation in them while still in their preparatory age of new data for this false conviction, accidentally became the possessors of something which is accounted in the given period desirable and thereby acquire authority, and at the same time find out, of course also accidentally, about some idea of the beings of past epochs which has already existed many times, and, giving it out as having been thought of by themselves, spread it around, then the beings of other groupings, through the absence in their common presences, due to wrong education, of the data which it is proper to all three-brained beings of responsible age to have in their presences, and which engender what are called ‘an instinctive sensing of reality’ and ‘a broad outlook,’ believe in the first place that this idea has arisen on their planet for quite the first time, and secondly that once the practical application of it has been actualized by those who already possess the said ‘something desirable,’ then it must indeed be very good, and they forthwith begin to imitate everything really good as well as bad, notwithstanding its complete contrariety to everything there is and to everything well fixed in their ordinary existence, merely in order to possess that which for today is considered desirable.
42.1046-7	“I then even remembered that I had already once long before very seriously reflected on this matter in the period of my fifth personal sojourn on the surface of your planet, when the city of Babylon was considered the center of culture of these strange three-brained beings, and when I had, on account of some similar question, to make a ‘logical analysis’ of just this strange feature of the psyche of these peculiar three-brained beings.
42.1047	“I then, among other things, also reasoned as follows:
42.1047	“That they think thus may perhaps be possibly justified by taking it into consideration that owing to the abnormal conditions of ordinary existence established in past epochs no exact information has reached them about events which have occurred in the past in the process of the existence of the three-brained beings who existed before them on their planet; but how is it possible to admit that up till now there has not arisen in the mentation of any one of them—in whom it has already been established that even until quite recently there does sometimes proceed a ‘something’ similar to the process of ‘comparative logic’—at least the following simple and almost, as they themselves would call it, ‘childish idea’?
42.1047	“And, namely, if as they themselves say and are even certain, that their planet has already existed many, many centuries with their species on it, beings similar to them—that is to say, beings who could mentate—and that many many millions of them must have also arisen and existed before them, would there really not have been then, from among these many many millions, at least a few beings who could also have invented for the well-being of their contemporaries all kinds of comforts as in the given case these contemporary American beings are now inventing and all the others are uncritically and even rapturously imitating, as, for example, ‘comfortable seats’ in the water closets, preserves, and so on and so forth.
42.1047-8	“This unpardonable lack of thought is all the more strange in that they themselves admit the existence of many, as they now call them, ancient sages, and also do not deny the great amount of most varied information which has come down to them concerning the many objective truths elucidated by these sages, which information, by the way, certain of your favorites at the present time are, without any remorse of conscience, giving out as having been thought of by themselves and exploiting to the full for their various egoistic aims, without at all suspecting that the totality of the results of these wiseacrings of theirs will inevitably lead their descendants sooner or later to total destruction.
42.1048	“This particularity of their mentation—very complicated for any ‘logical analysis’ undertaken for the purpose of understanding it—engendering in them this false conviction, was during the whole of my observation of them, beginning with the end of the existence of the continent Atlantis, always, so to say, the ‘gravity center cause’ of almost all the more or less major events unfavorable for them in the process of their collective existence.
42.1048	“Thanks to this false conviction, the result of their strange mentation, and in addition, thanks to the effect on the totality of the functioning of their feelings, of the consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer which inevitably arise in their presences at responsible age and which are called ‘envy,’ ‘greed,’ and ‘jealousy,’ it always happens there, that when the beings of any grouping become the possessors of anything which in the given period is considered desirable, in most cases because of that maleficent practice fixed in their everyday existence, which they express by the words ‘not to cease progressing,’ there immediately arises in the common presences of all the beings of other groupings, on whatever continents they may breed, as soon as the rumor of this reaches them, the desire to have the same, and from that moment, there arises in each of them firstly, the need to imitate them, and secondly, the ‘indubitable certainty’ that the beings of this other grouping must exist very correctly, since they have been able to acquire just what in the given period is accounted desirable.
42.1049	“In this connection, the so to say ‘piquancy’ of the strangeness of the mentation of your favorites is that there never occurs in their mentation the process called ‘to ponder’ in order to understand if only approximately the true causes of the possession by others of that on account of which there arise in them ‘envy,’ ‘greed,’ ‘jealousy,’ and so on.
42.1049	“And so, my boy, in spite of the fact that as far as the acquisition and hence the possession of the results attained by the conscious labors and intentional sufferings of the three-brained beings of past epochs of their planet are concerned, the beings of their new group have absolutely nothing at all, but consist as to inner content as well as to exterior manifestations only of everything bad that exists among contemporary beings of other independent groupings—solely because in recent times they have accidentally become the possessors of just that which in the objective sense is most despicable, yet which, owing in general to the fixed abnormal conditions of the ordinary existence of these unfortunates, is considered desirable—nevertheless the beings of all the other groupings now imitate to the full everything they invent.
42.1049	“Of all the maleficent inventions of the beings of this contemporary grouping which have accidentally acquired authority, the most harmful for their common presences—in respect of the possibility of rectifying in the future the so to say already actualized maleficences—must be considered the practice they have established of passing a great part of the time of their existences in high houses.
42.1049	“In order that you may clearly picture to yourself the significance of all the harm from just this invention of theirs, I must first of all explain to you the following:
42.1049-50	“Do you remember, when I spoke to you about that ‘maleficent means’ existing there at the present time called ‘sport,’ I said that the duration of the existence of these favorites of yours was in the beginning also Fulasnitamnian, that is to say, they had to exist until their body Kesdjan was completely coated in them and perfected up to the required gradation of Reason, and that afterwards, when very abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence began to be established there, Great Nature was constrained to actualize their presences and also the subsequent process of their existence on the principle of Itoklanoz, that is, according to the results of certain surrounding causes.
42.1050	“Thereafter, one of these causes has also been the ‘degree of the density of the vibrations’ of their ‘second being-food,’ that is, as they themselves would say, the ‘degree of condensation of the air they breathe.’
42.1050	“The point is that this cosmic formation which serves as the second food for beings is also composed according to the second fundamental common cosmic law of the Sacred Triamazikamno, and is also actualized by means of its three heterogeneous cosmic substances.
42.1050	“And, namely, the first is the emanation of the sun of that system in which this same definite cosmic arising serves as the ‘second food’ for beings.
42.1050	“The second are the substances transformed on that planet itself on which the beings fed by this food exist.
42.1050	“And the third are those substances which are transformed through the other planets of this system and which come to the given planet through their radiations.
42.1050-1	“And so, the process effusion of all those substances required for the normal formation and existence of beings, which are transformed by the planet itself and which actualize the second holy force of the Sacred Triamazikamno, can proceed in the correspondingly required definite proportion only within certain limits of the atmosphere from the surface of planets because, owing to the second grade cosmic law called Tenikdoa, or as your favorites would call it, ‘law of gravity,’ these substances cannot penetrate beyond a definite height of the atmosphere.
42.1051	“In my opinion you can yourself apprehend all the subsequent ensuing consequences of this question which I have just now brought to light, and compose data in yourself for your own opinion of the significance of this invention of theirs.
42.1051	“I think, my boy, that I have now already fully satisfied your curiosity concerning these ‘dollar fox-trotting’ followers of what is called ‘Christian Science.’
42.1051	“In the name of objective justice it now only remains for me to remark that whatever they may turn into in the future, I had however during my existence among them the possibility of inwardly resting, and for this I ought now to express to them my sincere thanks.
42.1051	“And you, just you, my heir, to whom has already been transmitted and will be transmitted by inheritance everything acquired by me during my long existence—of course only in so far as you yourself will deserve it by your own conscientious being-existence and honorable service to the ALL-COMMON FATHER MAINTAINER, our ENDLESSNESS—I command you, if you happen for some reason or other to be on the planet Earth, to visit without fail the city of New York, or if by that time this city should no longer exist, then at least stop at that place where it was situated and to utter aloud:
42.1051	“‘In this place my beloved grandfather, my just Teacher Beelzebub, pleasantly passed a few moments of his existence.’
42.1051-2	“I even charge you—of course again as the heir to whom, as is general, will devolve the fulfillment of the obligations which his predecessor took upon himself and which for some reason or other were left unfulfilled—specially to turn your attention to and to elucidate a question which greatly interested me and which I personally was unable to elucidate as it was still premature to do so; that is to say, I charge you to elucidate for yourself into what a ‘maleficent form’ for their descendants—if of course by that time their descendants still continue to arise—will the results have become molded of the ‘disease’ very widespread at that time, which one of their Misters, by name Onanson, called ‘writing itch.’
42.1052	“And indeed, my boy, having then during my stay there a more or less close relationship with many of them, I very soon found out that almost every one of them either had already written a book, or at that time was writing one, or was getting ready quickly to burst into authorship.
42.1052	“Although this peculiar ‘disease’ was then, as I have already said, widespread among almost all the beings of this continent and moreover among the beings of both sexes and without distinction of age, yet among the beings at the beginning of responsible age, that is, as they themselves say, among the ‘youth,’ and particularly among those who had many pimples on their faces, it was for some reason or other, as it is said, ‘epidemical.’
42.1052	“I must further remark in just this connection that there flourished that specific particularity of the strangeness of the common psyche of these peculiar beings who have taken your fancy, which has already long existed in their collective existence and which has been formulated by the following words: ‘the concentration of interests on an idea which has accidentally become the question of the day.’
42.1052-3	“Here also, many of them who turned out to be a little, as is said there, ‘more cunning,’ and in whom the data for the being-impulse called ‘instinctively to refrain from all manifestations which may lead surrounding beings similar to oneself into error’ were more atrophied, organized various what are called ‘schools’ and composed all kinds of ‘manuals,’ in which much attention was given to showing in detail just what the sequence of words should be so that all compositions should be better perceived and assimilated by the reader.
42.1053	“And thus all those attending these ‘schools’ and all readers of these ‘manuals,’ being themselves in regard to Being and in regard to information concerning reality exactly such types as our Teacher Mullah Nassr Eddin defined by the words ‘nullities with an atmosphere of unendurable vibrations,’ began according to these indications to wiseacre; and since in the first place thanks to various other abnormalities fixed in the conditions of the ordinary existence of the beings of this new grouping, the process of reading has previously in general become an organic need of theirs, and secondly, that it was possible to appreciate the contents of any composition exclusively only by reading it through, and all the other beings of this continent, seduced, what is more, by all kinds of, as they say there, ‘loud’ titles, read and read, then parallel with this it was definitely noticeable how their mentation, which had already, so to say, become ‘diluted’ without this, continued to become more ‘diluted’ and still more ‘diluted.’
42.1053	“I did not lightly say that if by that time their descendants still continue to arise, because among other things I then noticed that same extraordinary particularity in respect of the consequences of the new formation of the planetary body of beings of the female sex which I had already once noticed long before in the process of the ordinary existence of these strange three-brained beings, and parallel with this, I minutely constated among other special observations, the consequences ensuing from this particularity.
42.1053-4	“This extraordinary fact occurred there before the loss of the continent Atlantis, in the process of the existence of a small group of three-brained beings who were concentrated from various large groupings of that time and who existed in isolation on the then famous island called ‘Balakhanira,’ situated on the west of Atlantis and which was engulfed within the planet at the same time as Atlantis itself.
42.1054	“The continuation of the race of this small group ceased owing to this same strange particularity of the formation of the planetary body of the beings of the female sex, and this form of cessation of the race was then called by the learned members of the society Akhaldan, ‘Dezsoopsentoziroso.’
42.1054	“This extraordinary particularity was that several centuries before the final cessation of their race, there began gradually to narrow in their beings of the female sex what is called the pelvis.
42.1054	“The progressiveness of this narrowing was such that two centuries before the final cessation of their race, they were already producing all the accidental conceptions in them and the so to say ‘haphazard’ forming of these conceptions for their appearance, as is said there, ‘in God’s World’ by the means then called ‘Sitrik,’ namely, by means of what is now called Caesarian operations.”
42.1054	At this point of Beelzebub’s tales, what is called a “crosscurrent” or “agitation” began in the ether which penetrated the whole of the ship Karnak. This signified that the passengers of the ship Karnak were summoned to the “Djamdjampal,” that is, that “refectory” of the ship in which all the passengers together periodically fed on the second and first being-foods.
42.1054	So Beelzebub, Hassein, and Ahoon ceased their conversation and hastily went off to the Djamdjampal.
42.1054	∅

CHAPTER 42 Beelzebub in America

CHAPTER 42
Beelzebub in America