B878 <=> B880 [BTG XLI The bokharian dervish, p. 879]

“In short, all this and a multitude of other small factors, also ensuing from the abnormal existence of these favorites of yours, have finally brought about the formation among them, for mutual relationship, of various forms of, as they express it, ‘verbal amenity,’ and, as I have already told you, each locality there has its own special form.

“The attitude taken towards me by this sympathetic terrestrial three-brained being Hadji-Asvatz-Troov was benevolent chiefly because I was the friend of a good friend of his.

“It must here be remarked by the way, that the three-brained beings of this part of the surface of your planet are the only ones among whom the relationship of true friendship still exists.

“Among them, as it is general everywhere among three-brained beings, and just as it was in the first epochs on that planet also, not only is a friend himself a friend, but his near relatives and his friends are also regarded as friends and are treated just the same as the friend himself.

“Because I then passed for the friend of the dervish Hadji-Zephir-Bogga-Eddin, who was a very good friend of this Hadji-Asvatz-Troov, he then at once treated me in a very friendly manner.

“I wished to make the relationship still better, as I very much wanted to know how he had become interested in this knowledge and how he had attained to such scientific accomplishments as were unsurpassed on the Earth, and therefore throughout our conversation I liberally used those forms of verbal amenity which were customary in that locality.

“When during our conversation which dealt exclusively with the knowledge now called there Shat-Chai-Mernis, we came to speak of the nature and the significance of vibrations in general, and when we happened to talk about the octave of sound, Hadji-Asvatz-Troov then said that not only had the octave of sound seven aspects of relatively independent whole manifestations, but that the vibrations of any one of these relatively independent manifestations follow, in their arising as well as in their manifestation, the same conformity to law.