B1051 <=> B1053 (BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1052)

“And indeed, my boy, having then during my stay there a more or less close relationship with many of them, I very soon found out that almost every one of them either had already written a book, or at that time was writing one, or was getting ready quickly to burst into authorship.

“Although this peculiar ‘disease’ was then, as I have already said, widespread among almost all the beings of this continent and moreover among the beings of both sexes and without distinction of age, yet among the beings at the beginning of responsible age, that is, as they themselves say, among the ‘youth,’ and particularly among those who had many pimples on their faces, it was for some reason or other, as it is said, ‘epidemical.’

“I must further remark in just this connection, that there flourished that specific particularity of the strangeness of the common psyche of these peculiar beings who have taken your fancy, which has already long existed in their collective existence and which has been formulated by the following words: ‘the concentration of interests on an idea which has accidentally become the question of the day.’

“Here also, many of them who turned out to be a little, as is said there, ‘more cunning,’ and in whom the data for the being-impulse called ‘instinctively to refrain from all manifestations which may lead surrounding beings similar to oneself into error’ were more atrophied, organized various what are called ‘Schools’ and composed all kinds of ‘manuals,’ in which much attention was given to showing in detail just what the sequence of words should be so that all compositions should be better perceived and assimilated by the reader.