B953 <=> B955 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 954]

“A good example, and even, so to say, an ‘illuminatingly enlightening picture for your being-representation’ of what extraordinary perspectives are opened for the future by just this invention of theirs, is the fact that already certain of these contemporary American beings who have acquired, of course also by a variety of accidents, a quantity of their famous dollars, now arrange in their ‘water closets with comfortable seats’ such accessories as a small table, a telephone and what is called a ‘radio apparatus,’ so that when so sitting, they may continue their ‘correspondence,’ discuss over the telephone with their acquaintances all their dollar businesses, quietly read the newspapers which have become indispensable to them, or, finally, listen to those musical compositions, the work of various Hasnamusses there which, because they are, as is said, ‘fashionable,’ every contemporary American businessman is also obliged to know.

“The main harm in the significance of the resulting disharmony in the digestive functioning of all the contemporary three-brained beings of your planet from this American invention is due to the following causes:

“In former times, when more or less normal data for the engendering of objective Reason were still crystallized in the common presences of your favorites, and they themselves could reflect and understand when other similar and already enlightened beings explained the subject to them, they made the said posture as was required; but subsequently, when the said being data had definitely ceased to crystallize in them, and they also began discharging this function of theirs only automatically, then, thanks to the system prevalent before this American invention, the planetary body could of itself, automatically, by virtue only of what is called ‘animal instinct,’ adopt the required definite posture. But now that American beings have invented these ‘comfortable seats,’ and they have all begun using them for this inevitable function of theirs, their planetary body can no longer possibly adapt itself even instinctively to the required posture, with the consequence that not only have certain what are called ‘muscles’ which actualize this inevitable being-function become gradually atrophied in those of your favorites who use these American comfortable seats, owing to which what are called obstructions are formed in them, but in addition the causes are engendered of several specifically new diseases which, in the whole of our Great Universe, arise exclusively only in the presences of these strange three-brained beings.