B1022 <=> B1024 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1023]

“’Ekh! People, people! Why are you people? If only you were not people, you might perhaps be clever.’

“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.’

“But for myself I will only say, in this case ‘Wicked Moon.’

“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.

“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.

“The contemporary people-beings are able to create only such customs as make the quality of their psyche still worse.

“For instance, they have recently made a practice of always, here, there, and everywhere dancing a certain dance called the ‘fox trot.’

“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.’