B1078 <=> B1080 (BTG XLIII Beelzebub’s opinion of war, p. 1079)

“And these walking anatomical museums there invariably instruct others with great authority how to get rid of this cold and it is precisely they alone who write various books and manuals concerning all kinds of other diseases there and expound in minute detail how to guard against and get rid of them.

“At every step one might also observe such an absurdity as this: One of them who even does not know in the least what that ordinary tiny being which often bites him, called ‘flea,’ looks like, writes a ‘huge volume’ or draws up a special what is called ‘popular lecture’ that the flea whose bite made the neck of a certain historical King Nokhan swell, had on its left paw an ‘abnormal orange-crimson growth of a peculiar strange form.’

“Well then, if this expert in fleas there will write his voluminous work or if he will read for a whole evening his popular lecture on the ‘orange-crimson growth’ on the mentioned flea, then if anyone will not believe him and will express his doubt to his face, he will not only be offended but even greatly indignant, and he will be indignant chiefly because this somebody is such a what is called ‘ignoramus,’ that he has even not yet heard anything about the ‘truths’ communicated to him by this ‘expert.’

“Thanks to all the aforementioned, such pictures are met with at every step there on your planet in the existence of these strange three-brained beings, that only from observing and studying them every normal being existing there, if he will indeed take in and study his perceptions, might become fully instructed in all branches of general objective science.

“For the satisfying of your favorites’ astonishingly strange need I mentioned, as is said there, not to suffer, they must always have at least one ‘victim’ for their teachings, but among a number of them who have acquired for some reason or other in these manifestations of theirs a certain authority over others and who have become in consequence by increasing habit, more impudent, the appetite grows to the point of acquiring an always greater number of these ‘victims.’