Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

28 The Chief Culprit in the Destruction of All the Very Saintly Labors of Ashiata Shiemash

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“It was then that I learned that this Lentrohamsanin arose, or, as it is said there, ‘was born,’ on the continent Asia, in the capital of Nievia, the town Kronbookhon.

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“When this couple, in what is called ‘the-decline-of-their-years,’ had already become very rich, they moved to the capital city Kronbookhon in order to exist there, but only for their own pleasure.

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“Well then, my dear boy, when after the said banquet, the learned beings of Nievia returned home, they immediately began firstly to speak among their neighbors and later more and more widely, here, there and everywhere, about that unprecedented Kashireitleer itself, and, secondly, already foaming at the mouth, to persuade and convince everybody of the truth of those ‘revelations’ which that great Lentrohamsanin had inscribed on this Kashireitleer.

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“The result of it all was that the ordinary beings of the town Kronbookhon as well as of other parts of the country Nievia talked among themselves of nothing but these ‘revelations.’

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“And gradually, as it also usually happens there, almost everywhere beings became divided into two mutually opposing parties, one of which favored the ‘invention’ of the subsequent Universal Hasnamuss, and the other, the already existing and well-fixed forms of being-existence.

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“Thus it continued during almost a whole terrestrial year, during which time the ranks of the contending parties increased everywhere and towards each other there grew one of their particular properties called ‘hate’; the result of which was that one sorrowful day in the town of Kronbookhon itself, there suddenly began among the beings, who had become followers of one or the other of the two said mutually opposite currents, their process of what is called ‘civil war.’

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“‘Civil war’ is the same as ‘war’; the difference is only that in ordinary war, beings of one community destroy the beings of another community, while in a civil war the process of reciprocal destruction proceeds among beings of one and the same community, as, for example, brother annihilates brother; father, son; uncle, nephew, and so on.

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“At the outset, during the four days that the horrible process was at its height in Kronbookhon, and the attention of the other beings of the whole country of Nievia was concentrated on it, everything was still relatively quiet in the other towns, but here and there, small, what are called ‘skirmishes’ occasionally took place. When at the end of the fourth day, those who were for the ‘invention’ of Lentrohamsanin, that is for the learned beings, were victorious in Kronbookhon, then, from that time on, the same process also began at all the large and small points of the whole surface of Nievia.