B418 <=> B420 (BTG XXIX Fruits of former civilizations, p. 419)

“Well, it was just this same game that became the cause of all that happened later.

“It turned out that among those ancient bored fishermen, there were several so ‘bright’ and ‘ingenious’ that they became expert in inventing, according to the principle of that peculiar ‘game,’ very long explanations.

“And when one of them discovered how to make what was afterwards called ‘parchment’ from the skin of the fish called ‘shark,’ then some of these skillful fellows, just to ‘swagger’ before their companions, even began inscribing these long explanations of theirs on these fishskins, employing those conventional signs which had been invented earlier, for another game called ‘mousetrap.’

“Still a little later, when these bored fishermen had already given place to their descendants, both these inscribed fishskins and the craze for the said peculiar ‘game’ passed on to the latter by inheritance; and these various new inventions, both their own and their ancestors,’ they called first by the very high-sounding name ‘science.’

“And from then on, as the craze for ‘cooking up’ these sciences passed from generation to generation, the beings of that group, whose ancestors had been simple Asiatic fishermen, became ‘specialists’ in inventing all kinds of sciences as these.

“These sciences, moreover, also passed from generation to generation and a number of them have reached the contemporary beings of that planet almost unchanged.

“And hence it is that almost a half of what are called the ‘egoplastikoori’ arising in the Reason of the contemporary beings of that ill-fated planet, from which what is called a ‘being-world-outlook’ is in general formed in beings, are crystallized just from the ‘truths’ invented there by these bored fishermen and their subsequent generations.

“Concerning the ancient shepherds who later formed the great powerful community called ‘Rome,’ their ancestors also were often forced, on account of bad weather, to put their flocks into sheltered places, and to pass the time together somehow or other.