B271 <=> B273 [BTG XXIII Beelzebub’s fourth sojourn, p. 272]

“This Menitkel then ‘proved’ by his theory that these ‘fellow apes’ of theirs had descended neither more nor less than from what are called ‘people who became wild.’

“And the other terrestrial beings of that period, as it had already become proper to them, implicitly believed this ‘Auntie’s darling’ without any essence-criticism whatsoever, and from that time on, this question which had then agitated the strange Reason of your favorites, became a subject of discussion and fantasying, and existed right up to what is called the ‘seventh-in-turn great general planetary process of reciprocal destruction.’

“Thanks to this maleficent idea, there was even fixed in the instincts of most of these unfortunates at that period still another abnormal what is called ‘dictatory factor,’ which began to engender in their common presences the false feeling that these ape-beings were presumably ‘sacred’; and the abnormal factor engendering this sacrilegious impulse, also passing by inheritance from generation to generation, has reached the instincts of very many beings even of the present time.

“This false idea that arose and was fixed there owing to the said ‘pawnshop progeny’ existed during nearly two of their centuries, and became an inseparable part of the Reason of the majority of them; and only various events proceeding from the mentioned general planetary process effaced it until it ultimately completely disappeared from their common presences.