B968 <=> B970 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 969]

“I repeat, my boy, that there on your planet, the beings of past epochs, especially those breeding on this continent of Asia, had already many times attempted to use various methods of preserving products for a long time, and it always ended as follows: first of all, certain persons, thanks to their conscious or accidental observations, discovered the undesirable and harmful consequences of this kind of practice both for themselves and for those near them; and then, they communicated this to all the other beings, who, having also made observations with as much impartiality as possible towards themselves, also became convinced of the correctness of these deductions; and ultimately, they all ceased to employ these practices in the process of their existence.

“Even quite recently on this same continent Asia, certain beings again attempted not only to find a method by which it might indeed be possible to preserve their edible products for a long time without deterioration, but they even tried to find some entirely new means for minimizing as much as possible the time spent on this inevitable being-need of feeding on the first-food; and this time they were almost on the verge of discovering a very suitable method for this purpose.

“I can give you satisfactory details concerning the interesting results of their new investigations in this sphere because I not only personally knew the terrestrial three-brained being who by his conscious labors discovered the said method, but was even present personally at several elucidatory experiments upon the possibilities of applying this method to beings, conducted by the initiator himself of the, so to say, ‘new investigations.’