B1080 <=> B1082 [BTG XLIII Beelzebub’s opinion of war, p. 1081]

“Such beings, no doubt, are also still met with there on your planet as approximately answer to this sense of the word, but only among those contemporary beings of the planet Earth who are considered, according to the understanding of most of the beings there, as ‘unintelligent.’

“In my opinion, if those beings especially of the most recent times who are called there intelligentsia would simply be called ‘mechanogentsia,’ then perhaps this would be more correct.

“It would be more correct because the contemporary intelligentsia there can themselves not only give absolutely no direction at all to their being-functions, but there are already finally atrophied in them even those data for impulses of essence-initiative for daily being-existence which in general are always placed by Great Nature herself in all three-centered beings at their arising.

“During their responsible existence these intelligentsia beings there always act or manifest only when they receive corresponding shocks from outside, and it is these same shocks proceeding from outside which give them the possibility of becoming correspondingly animated and of experiencing, only through the unrolling of the series of former corresponding automatic perceptions already present in them and not depending at all on their own wish or will; and these external shocks of theirs for the said kind of experiencing are usually in the first place, animate or inanimate things accidentally coming within the sphere of their organs of perception of visibility; secondly, the various beings they meet; thirdly, the sounds or words reverberating where they happen to be; fourthly, scents accidentally perceived by their sense of smell; and finally, unaccustomed sensations that proceed from time to time during the functioning of their planetary body, or as they say, their ‘organism’ and so on.