B424 <=> B426 [BTG XXIX Fruits of former civilizations, p. 425]

“But if nobody sees what they do, then nothing they do – even if in their own consciousness and their own feelings it should be undesirable – engenders any such impulse in them.

“The ‘bliss’ prepared there by the ancient Romans has in recent times already so penetrated the nature of your favorites breeding on all the continents of that ill-fated planet, that it is even difficult to say which beings of which contemporary communities have inherited most from these ‘obliging’ Romans.

“But as regards the inheritance passed down from the ancient Greeks, namely, the passion for inventing various fantastic sciences, this has not become inherent to all the three-brained beings of contemporary times equally, but it has passed down only to certain beings arising among the beings of all the contemporary large and small communities breeding on all the terra firma parts of the surface of that peculiar planet.

“Proportionately, this passion, namely, ‘to-invent-fantastic-sciences,’ has passed down from the ancient Greeks mainly to the beings of the contemporary community existing there under the name of ‘Germany.’

“The beings of that contemporary Germany can be boldly called the ‘direct-heirs-of-the-ancient–Greek–civilization’; and they can be so called, because at the present time it is just they, who chiefly bring every kind of new science and invention into contemporary civilization.

“Unfortunately, my boy, the beings of that contemporary community Germany have in many respects, as it is said, surpassed the beings of ancient Greece.

“Thanks to the sciences invented by the ancient Greeks, only the being-mentation of other beings was spoiled and still continues to be spoiled.

“But in addition to this, the contemporary beings of that community Germany have become very skillful also in inventing those sciences, thanks to which the said specific disease there of wiseacring has been very widely spread among other of your favorites; and during the process of this disease in them, many of them semiconsciously or even quite automatically chance to notice some small detail of the common cosmic process which actualizes Everything Existing, and afterwards, informing others of it, they together use it for some of their, as they are called, new inventions, thereby adding to the number of those ‘new means,’ of which during the last two of their centuries so many have accumulated there, that their total effect has now already become, what is called, the ‘resultant-decomposing-force,’ in contradistinction to what is called the ‘resultant-creative-force’ of Nature.