B531 <=> B533 [BTG XXXI Last sojourn to Earth, p. 532]

“Even I, who had then learned perfectly eighteen of their different languages, found myself during my travels under conditions at times where I had not even the possibility of getting fodder for my horse, in spite of the fact that my pockets were full of what is called there ‘money,’ for which in general they will give you with the greatest joy there anything you please.

“It may happen there that if one of these unfortunate beings existing in some town or other, knowing all the languages used in that town, finds it for some reason or other necessary on another occasion to be in some other place at a distance of fifty or so of what are called there ‘miles’ – which distance corresponds approximately to one of our ‘Klintrana’ – then this ill-fated three-brained being, happening to be even at this insignificant distance from the place of his somehow or other established existence – owing to the abnormality there, referred to, and also of course because in the common presences of these unfortunate beings the data in general for instinctive perception were long ago atrophied – becomes absolutely helpless and can neither ask for what he really needs, nor understand a word of what is said to him.

“These numerous languages of theirs not only have nothing in common with each other, but one of them will sometimes be so built up that it has absolutely no correspondence with the possibilities of those organs of the common presence of the being which are specially adapted by Nature for this purpose and which are called ‘vocal cords’; and even I, who have a much greater possibility in this respect, was entirely unable to utter certain words.

“The beings of the planet Earth themselves, however, realized this ‘absurdity’ of theirs, and recently while I was still there, a number of ‘representatives’ of their different ‘solid’ communities met somewhere together jointly to find a means for a way out of this difficulty.