B1095 <=> B1097 (BTG XLIII Beelzebub’s opinion of war, p. 1096)

“They were so struck with this theory of his, that at first, as is said there, a ‘sepulchral silence’ prevailed among them for quite a time, and, plunged into stupor, none of them could even stir, and only after the lapse of rather a long time such a great noise and hullabaloo arose among them as if the saving of each one’s life depended on the degree of his excitement and its outer manifestations.

“The result of it all was that late in the evening of the same day they unanimously decided to elect from their midst several learned beings, jointly to investigate thoroughly the details of this theory which had struck them and afterwards to make a detailed report upon it to the general assembly.

“From the very next day, those elected learned members of the society ‘The-Earth-Is-Equally-Free-for-All’ very earnestly set to work to familiarize themselves with the theory of this Atarnakh.

“But to the misfortune of all three-brained beings of future times, arising on this ill-fated planet, it turned out that although all the elected learned members were also already advanced in years, and those malignant functions which in the beings of the Earth make their Being so to say ‘jealous’ and ‘greedy’ were almost atrophied in them, yet for various reasons, chiefly owing to their abnormal education, certain of them it seems had not yet acquired enough ground to be convinced of the nonactualizability of their dreams – which they owed to that notorious abnormal education of theirs – with the result that they were still not yet sufficiently disillusioned to be able to be fully impartial and just.