B434 <=> B436 [BTG XXIX Fruits of former civilizations, p. 435]

“The beings of that contemporary community Italy exists at the present time very quietly and peacefully, doing nothing more than unostentatiously inventing ever new forms of their harmless and very innocent what is called ‘macaroni.’

“Nevertheless, there had passed to certain beings of that contemporary Italy, by heredity from their ancestors, one special and very peculiar ‘property’ called ‘giving-pleasure-to-others.’

“Only they manifest this inherited need, that is to say this ‘giving-pleasure’ not towards beings there like themselves, but to beings of other forms.

“It must in fairness be stated that the said special property passed to beings of various parts of contemporary Italy not from the great Romans alone; this inherited property became more ‘naturalized’ by their ancestors of considerably later epochs, namely, at the time when they began spreading, among other beings both of their own community and of the neighboring weaker communities, the doctrines, already changed for their egoistic purposes, of a certain genuine ‘sacred-Messenger-from-Above.’

“At the present time the beings of various parts of contemporary Italy actualize this property of giving-pleasure-to-others in the following way:

“The existence of the quadruped beings called ‘sheep’ and ‘goats,’ whose planetary bodies they also use for their first food, they do not destroy all at once; but in order to give this ‘pleasure’ they do it ‘slowly’ and ‘gently’ over a period of many days; that is to say, one day they take off one leg, then a few days later, a second leg, and so on, for as long as the sheep or goat still breathes. And sheep and goats can breathe without the said parts of their common presence for a very long time because, in the main functions of the taking in of cosmic substances for the possibility of existing, these parts do not participate, though they do participate in the functions which actualize those impulses giving self-sensations.