B960 <=> B962 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 961]

“Although the acute stage of this, so to say, obtuseness in the presences of most of the ordinary beings of that period soon passed, nevertheless the ‘raging destruction’ both of these beds themselves and of the beings who used them, continued by momentum during several terrestrial years. Eventually, this maleficent invention went completely out of use, and soon it was even forgotten that such beds had ever existed on the planet.

“At any rate, it can be said with certainty that if the ‘civilization’ of the beings of the group now breeding on the continent America develops in its present spirit and at its present rate, then they also will unquestionably ‘civilize themselves’ to the degree of having ‘bed couches’ as astonishing as were those beds ‘if you wish to enjoy felicity, then enjoy it with a bang.’

“It will not be amiss now, my boy, also to remark, by way of illustration, upon the invention of preserved products for the first being-food and their application in the process of being-existence by the beings of this contemporary group, who in recent times have chanced to become for the strange Reason of the beings of all the other continents, so to say, ‘objects of imitation,’ chiefly on account simply of the fact that they were supposed to be the first on their planet to invent such beneficent and convenient being-usages, namely, in the given case, the device of feeding themselves with preserved products, thanks to which they, as it were, save time.

“The contemporary unfortunate three-brained beings in general who breed on your planet are, of course, not aware, nor for causes already explained to you, have they in themselves the possibility of reflecting, that their remote ancestors of various past ages, who were much more normally formed into responsible beings, must have ‘racked their brains,’ as is said, ‘not a little’ to discover means for minimizing the time spent on this inevitable being-necessity of feeding themselves with products; and having found such apparently expedient methods, they every time, after a brief trial of them, eventually became convinced that these products, of whatever kind and however they might be preserved, always deteriorated with time and became worthless for their first-food; and hence they ceased to employ these methods in the process of their ordinary existence.