Having said this with a smile, Beelzebub became silent; a little later he made a very strange gestu1e with his left hand, and with an intonation not proper to his own voice, he continued: “While I am gradually recalling and telling you about all this concerning the events of a period of my existence now long since past, the wish arises in me to make a sincere confession to you — just to you, one of my direct heirs who must inevitably represent the sum of all my deeds during the periods of the process of my past being-existence — and namely, I wish sincerely to confess to you that when my essence, with the participation of the parts of my presence, subject to it alone, had independently decided to take a personal part in those scientific elucidatory experiments with the demonstrating part of the new invention of Gornahoor Harharkh, and I had entered into this demonstrating part without the least compulsion from outside, yet, in spite of it all, my essence allowed to creep into my being and to be developed side by side with the said strange experiencings, a criminally EGOISTIC anxiety for the safety of my personal existence. BTG XVIII

“The said ‘wild’ beings there, were at that period particularly ‘dangerous’ both for the three-brained beings there, and for those forms of quadruped beings which your favorites, with the ‘cunning’ proper to them, had already been able to make their slaves, compelling them to work exclusively for the satisfaction of their EGOISTIC needs. BTG XXII

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

I after learning which, you will be able clearly to represent to yourself and approximately to understand how greatly the ‘logical mentation’ in all these three-brained beings who have taken your fancy must have deteriorated in so short a time that without any what is called ‘constancy-of-self-individuality’ they have submitted to be made ‘slaves’ of those few from among their midst who are called ‘wastrels’, and who, in consequence of the total loss of the divine impulse ‘conscience’ could for their EGOISTIC aims create from this ’empty word’ art which chanced to reach them, also such a ‘sure-fire-factor’ in all of them for the final atrophy of all the data that still survived in them for ‘conscious-Being’. BTG XXX

“And as regards this word art itself, upon which, thanks to the strangeness of their Reason, there has been ‘piled up’ during this time, as they themselves would say, ‘devil-knows-what’, I must tell you that my special investigations regarding this word made it clear to me that when this word among the other words and separate expressions used by the learned beings of that time also began automatically to pass from generation to generation and chanced to get into the vocabulary of certain three-brained beings there, in whose presences, owing to various surrounding circumstances, the crystallizations of the consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer proceeded in that sequence and ‘reciprocal-action’, as a result of which they predisposed the arising in their common presences of data for the Being of Hasnamuss-individuals then this said word for some reason or other happening to please just this kind of three-brained being there, they began using it for their EGOISTIC aims, and gradually made from it that very something which, although it continues to consist of, as it is said, ‘complete vacuity’, yet has gradually collected about itself a fairylike exterior, which now ‘blinds’ every one of these favorites of yours who keeps his attention on it only a little longer than usual. BTG XXX

“Among such patients of mine were the wives of husbands who, having chanced to read these works, wished to suggest to their wives their EGOISTIC wishes; for similar reasons children of unreasonable parents became my patients; various men who were found to be under the orders, or as it is said there, ‘under the thumb’ of their mistresses, and so on and so forth. BTG XXXII

“Adiat, Haidia, or fashions, are like our customs for daily being-existence which are established for the daily use of the three-brained beings for the alleviation of inevitable exterior conditions independent of beings, and which usually gradually enter everywhere into the daily use of beings as a necessary need, essential for them. These said contemporary customs or fashions of theirs are, firstly, only temporary and thus serve for the satisfaction only of the personal insignificant aims of these present and future Hasnamusses, which become phenomenally abnormal and trivially EGOISTIC; and secondly, they are neither more nor less than the results of automatic Reason based on that relative understanding, which generally flows from the abnormally established conditions there of ordinary being-existence. BTG XXXVII

“However, it must be admitted that although the power-possessing beings of the community France also adopt these ‘good means’ and successfully attain their EGOISTIC aims, yet these means, though, be it said, to no credit of the power-possessing beings of the communities of England and Russia, bring scarcely any harm to the planetary bodies themselves of the ordinary beings. BTG XXXVII

“And so, when, on the one hand, thanks to these crystallizations, there began to be acquired in the common presences of certain terrestrial three-brained beings, the first germs of what are called Hasnamussian properties, in consequence of which such beings began, as is proper to them for their EGOISTIC aims, to invent for the ‘confusion’ of surrounding beings similar to themselves, various fictions, among which were also every kind of fantastic, what are called ‘religious teachings’; and when, on the other hand, other of your favorites began to have faith in these fantastic religious teachings, and gradually lost their ‘sane mentation’ shanks to these same crystallizations, then from that time on there began to arise in the process of the ordinary existence of these strange three-brained beings a large number of ‘Havatvernoni’ or ‘religions’ having nothing in common with each other. BTG XXXVIII

“And further, already during the transmission from generation to generation of these religious teachings, the sense of which had already from the very beginning been distorted, they begin to adopt in regard to them the following two factors, which had already become fixed in the general existence of these strange three-brained beings. The first of these consists in this, that those beings, who in the given period of the ‘flow-of-time’ belong to the caste called the ruling class, immediately hook on to these religious teachings just that, for them, most maleficent ‘question’ which exists on this ill-starred planet under the name of ‘Religion-for-the-State-or-the-State-for-Religion’, and corresponding to this, they gradually begin with every kind of artfulness to juggle with the previously fixed facts for the justification of their own EGOISTIC aims; and the second consists in this, that certain ordinary beings there, owing to the fault of their producers, acquired in their common presences, during their arising as well as during their formation into responsible beings, the inherency of what is called ‘psychopathy’ and ‘parasitism’ — in consequence of which they do not have and cannot have in themselves any data at all for the manifestation of any being-duty whatever it might be — and become, as it were, authorities for all the trifling details of the new religious teachings which have already arisen in the mentioned way, and begin, as it is said, ‘to-peck-like-crows-at-a-jackal’s-carcass’, that totality, already ‘pecked’ from the very beginning without this, of what had been spoken and indicated by the genuine Sacred Individuals, intentionally actualized from Above. BTG XXXVIII

“And into this teaching of truth and verity, they began also to mix for various EGOISTIC and political reasons, fragments taken from other religious teachings already existing there, but fragments such as had not only nothing in common with the teaching of Jesus, but which sometimes even flatly contradicted the truths this Divine Teacher taught. BTG XXXVIII

“Furthermore, not only have these sacrilegious beings gradually distorted for their EGOISTIC and political aims the teachings of this Divine Teacher, but they have now begun to destroy even the memory of it. BTG XXXVIII

“Now as regards the second great religion which was founded, as I have already told you, upon ‘bits-here-and-bits-there’ from the teaching of the full-of-hope Saint Mohammed, this religion from the very beginning of its arising began to be particularly applied and used for their EGOISTIC and political aims by beings there with Hasnamussian properties, and hence it is the most ‘stripped’ of all. BTG XXXVIII

“After what I have just said, you should now without any doubt understand how the three-brained beings, of the two types indicated by me of the planet Earth which has taken your fancy, have distorted for their various EGOISTIC aims all the truths to such an extent, that about this Judas, now a Saint — thanks to whom alone such a blessed hearth of tranquillity from their desolate existence had arisen and existed for them for twenty centuries — there has been crystallized in the presences of the beings of all subsequent generations such an unprecedented unjust representation. BTG XXXVIII

“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’. BTG XLII

“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. BTG XLII

“Such a monstrous need arises in their abnormal psyche because they expect certain EGOISTIC profits from these processes, either personally for themselves or for their nearest, and with their degenerated mentation they even hope that the greater the scale of the next process, the greater the extent of the said profits to be obtained, either personally for themselves or for their nearest. BTG XLIII

“But owing to their various personal EGOISTIC and vainglorious aims, the ordinary terrestrial important and power-possessing beings who had then assembled, very soon quarreled among themselves and went their ways home without accomplishing anything. BTG XLIII

“And, thanks to this, they had fewer EGOISTIC, vain, and other properties, on account of which similar societies there usually break down. BTG XLIII

“Above all, from this society something effective might have resulted because there was not a single power-possessing being among them, since on account of their same EGOISTIC and vainglorious aims these beings sooner or later always dispatch all the accomplishments of any society whatsoever of a common planetary character of which they happen to be members — and moreover dispatch them with ‘musical accompaniment’ — to the famous swine of our Mullah Nassr Eddin, which always gobble up everything, without what are called ‘parlor manners’. BTG XLIII

“When these other terrestrial important and power-possessing beings enter such societies and also begin to participate in their affairs, then they, with their personal EGOISTIC and vainglorious aims, as a rule not only very soon send all the tasks of the society and everything that has been done by the beings with ‘resurrected consciences’ as is said ‘flying up the chimney’, but as a rule, they also very soon, as it is also said there, ‘put genuine spokes into the wheels of the first founders of these societies’. BTG XLIII

“In the middle of Gornahoor Rakhoorkh’s explanations concerning the mentioned properties of the Omnipresent cosmic-substance Okidanokh and the inevitable consequences of its extraction and destruction from the common presence of your planet, the suspicion arose in me, and in my memory there gradually began to be restored all kinds of general pictures — previously perceived during my personal sojourn among your favorites just during the period of my close observations on their existence from tile planet Mars of the impressions from their ordinary being-existence — of how they at different periods repeatedly obtained this substance or its separate parts from the nature of their planet and used them for their different, naïvely EGOISTIC aims. BTG XLV

But at the same time Great Nature has given him the possibility of being not merely a blind tool of the whole of the entire service to these all-universal objective purposes but, while serving Her and actualizing what is foreordained for him — which is the lot of every breathing creature — of working at the same time also for himself, for his own EGOISTIC individuality. BTG XLVIII