B432 <=> B434 [BTG XXIX Fruits of former civilizations, p. 433]

“And ever since the beings of this contemporary community started inventing these practical objects, the ordinary existence of the three-brained beings of your planet has been, just as our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin says, ‘not-life-but-free-jam.’

“The beings of that contemporary community have been the benefactors of the other contemporary beings of your planet, offering them, as they say there, ‘philanthropic aid,’ especially as regards their first being-duty, namely, the duty of carrying out from time to time the process of ‘reciprocal destruction.’

“Thanks to them, the discharge of that being-duty of theirs has gradually become for your contemporary favorites, the ‘merest trifle.’

“In the absence of those inventions it used to be exceedingly arduous for these poor favorites of yours to fulfill that being-duty, because they were formerly forced to spend a good deal of sweat for it.

“But thanks to the adaptations of every kind invented by those contemporary beings, it is now as again our esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin says, ‘just roses, roses.’

“The contemporary beings now scarcely need to make any effort whatsoever in order to destroy completely the existence of beings like themselves.

“Sometimes sitting quietly in what they call their ‘smoking rooms’ they can destroy, just as a pastime, as it were, tens and sometimes even hundreds of others like themselves.

“I might as well now, I think, tell you a little also about the still existing direct descendants of the beings of the mentioned Greek-Roman civilizations.

“The descendants of the beings of the once ‘great’ and ‘powerful’ community Greece there, still continue to exist and also to have their own independent community, but for the other independent communities there, they have at the present time scarcely any significance whatever.