B1046 <=> B1048 (BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1047)

“I then, among other things, also reasoned as follows:

“That they think thus may perhaps be possibly justified by taking it into consideration that owing to the abnormal conditions of ordinary existence established in past epochs no exact information has reached them about events which have occurred in the past in the process of the existence of the three-brained beings who existed before them on their planet; but how is it possible to admit that up till now there has not arisen in the mentation of any one of them – in whom it has already been established that even until quite recently there does sometimes proceed a ‘something’ similar to the process of ‘comparative logic’ – at least the following simple and almost, as they themselves would call it, ‘childish idea’?

“And, namely, if as they themselves say and are even certain, that their planet has already existed many, many centuries with their species on it, beings similar to them – that is to say, beings who could mentate – and that many many millions of them must have also arisen and existed before them, would there really not have been then, from among these many many millions, at least a few beings who could also have invented for the well-being of their contemporaries all kinds of comforts as in the given case these contemporary American beings are now inventing and all the others are uncritically and even rapturously imitating, as, for example, ‘conformable seats’ in the water closets, preserves, and so on and so forth.

“This unpardonable lack of thought is all the more strange in that they themselves admit the existence of many, as they now call them, ancient sages, and also do not deny the great amount of most varied information which has come down to them concerning the many objective truths elucidated by these sages, which information, by the way, certain of your favorites at the present time are, without any remorse of conscience, giving out as having been thought of by themselves and exploiting to the full for their various egoistic aims, without at all suspecting that the totality of the results of these wiseacrings of theirs will inevitably lead their descendants sooner or later to total destruction.