B876 <=> B878 [BTG XLI The bokharian dervish, p. 877]

“Data for engendering the aforesaid inner being-impulse are not yet formed either in the presences of any of those terrestrial one-brained or two-brained beings with whom these strange three-brained beings who have taken your fancy have long had and still have frequent contact and relations.

“Although these being-data are still formed in the presences of certain terrestrial one-brained and two-brained beings of other exterior forms, as for example those named by them ‘tigers,’ ‘lions,’ ‘bears,’ ‘hyenas,’ ‘snakes,’ ‘phalangas,’ ‘scorpions,’ and so on, who have not had and do not now have in their mode of existence any contact or relation with these biped favorites of yours, nevertheless there is already formed in their common presences, thanks of course to the abnormally established conditions of the ordinary existence of your favorites, one very strange and highly interesting particularity, namely, that the enumerated beings, tigers, lions, bears, hyenas, snakes, phalangas, scorpions, and so on, perceive the inner feeling of fear in other beings before them as enmity towards themselves, and therefore strive to destroy these others in order to avert the ‘menace’ from themselves.

“And this so happened because your favorites, thanks always to the same abnormal conditions of existence, have gradually become, as they themselves say, ‘cowardly’ from head to foot, and because at the same time the need of destroying the existence of others has been inculcated in them, also from head to foot. And so, when they, being already cowards ‘of the highest degree,’ are about to destroy the existence of the beings of these other forms, or when they chance to meet such beings – who it must be said, to their misfortune and to our regret, have become at the present time already much stronger than they, physically as well as in other being-attainments – then they become ‘afraid,’ as they say there in such cases, ‘to the point of wetness.’