B1044 <=> B1046 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 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.

“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.

“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.

“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.