XIII. Why in Man’s Reason Fantasy May Be Perceived as Reality (pgs. B103 – B105)
Chapitre 13 Pourquoi, dans la raison de l’homme, l’imaginaire peut être perçu comme réel
Capítulo 13 Por que na razão do homem a fantasia pode ser percebida como realidade.
To Hassein’s question, why the beings on the planet Earth take the ephemeral for the real, Beelzebub replies that this particularity in the psyche of the three-brained beings arose only during later periods; and it arose only because their predominant part gradually allowed the other parts of their total presence to perceive every new impression without fulfilling what is called ‘being-partkdolg-duty,’ that is to say, merely as such impressions are generally perceived by one or another of their independent localizations known as ‘being-centers.’ Or, to put it in their language, they believe everything anybody says, instead of believing only what they have been able to verify by their own ‘sane deliberation.’
As Beelzebub explains to Hassein, this strange trait of their psyche, that of being satisfied with whatever Smith or Brown says without trying to know more, became rooted in them long ago, and now they no longer make the least effort to know anything that can be understood solely by their own active reflection. As he points out, the blame for this does not lie in the organ kundabuffer but in themselves, on account of the abnormal conditions of external ordinary being-existence they gradually established, and which have progressively fostered in their common presence what has now become their ‘inner evil god’, called ‘self-calming.’