Having thus begun, I can now be quite at ease, and should even, according to the notions of religious morality existing among contemporary people, be beyond all doubt assured that everything further in this new venture of mine will now proceed, as is said, “like a pianola”. BTG I

My first act, obviously in discordance with the manifestations of others, though truly without the participation not only of my consciousness but also of my subconsciousness, occurred on exactly the fortieth day after the death of my grandmother, when all our family, our relatives and all those by whom my dear grandmother, who was loved by everybody, had been held in esteem, gathered in the cemetery according to custom, to perform over her mortal remains, reposing in the grave, what is called the “requiem service”, when suddenly without any rhyme or reason, instead of observing what was conventional among people of all degrees of tangible and intangible morality and of all material positions, that is to say, instead of standing quietly as if overwhelmed, with an expression of grief on one’s face and even if possible with tears in one’s eyes, I started skipping round the grave as if dancing and sang: BTG I

Having said these last words, Beelzebub, after a little while, with a bitter smile, continued to talk as follows: “You, for instance, have the normal presence of a three-brained being, and within your presence, there is intentionally ‘implanted ‘ from without, ‘Oskiano ‘, or as they say there on the Earth, ‘education ‘, which is founded on a morality based solely on the commandments and indications of the UNI-BEING HIMSELF and the Most Holy Individuals near to him. And yet, if you should chance to be there among them, you would be unable to precent the process in yourself of the ‘being-Nerhitrogool ‘, that is, the process, which, again there on the Earth, is called ‘irrepressible inner laughter ‘, that is to say, you would not be able to restrain yourself from such laughter, if in some way or another, they were suddenly clearly to sense and understand, without any doubt whatever, that not only does nothing like ‘light ‘, ‘darkness ‘, ‘heat ‘, and so on, come on their planet from their Sun itself, but that their supposed ‘source of heat and light ‘ is itself almost always freezing cold like the ‘hairless-dog ‘ of our highly esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin. BTG XVII

“Very well knowing this aspect also of their strange psyche, I had no desire to offend them and to incur their wrath; furthermore, I was always profoundly aware that to outrage anybody’s religious feeling is contrary to all morality, so, when existing among them, I always tried to do as they did, in order not to be conspicuous and attract their attention. BTG XX

“Here it will be very interesting to notice a particularity of this morality which was grafted upon it at the very beginning of its arising and which ultimately became part and parcel of it. BTG XXIV

“What this said particularity of terrestrial morality is, you can easily represent to yourself and under stand if I tell you that both inwardly and outwardly, it acquired exactly that ‘unique property’ which belongs to the being bearing the name ‘chameleon’. BTG XXIV

“And the oddity and peculiarity of this said particularity of the morality there, especially of contemporary morality, is that its functioning automatically depends entirely on the moods of the local authorities, which moods in their turn depend also automatically on the state of the four sources of action existing there under the names of ‘mother-in-law’, ‘digestion’, ‘John Thomas’, and cash. BTG XXIV

“And about these, from the point of view of your contemporary favorites, ‘very-ancient’ communities, I must furthermore not fail to explain to you and possibly in detail, because not only did they then, as I have already said, make a clean sweep from the face of that unfortunate planet of the last results beneficial for all the three-brained beings of all subsequent epochs, and even of all traces of the memory of the Very Saintly Labors of the Essence-loving Ashiata Shiemash, but they were also the cause that real ‘nonsense’ already proceeds in the Reasons of the contemporary favorites of yours, and that there is completely atrophied in them that ‘fundamental-being-impulse’ which is the main lever of objective morality, and which is called ‘organic shame’. BTG XXIX

“And the Romans were the cause why as a result of successive changes, those factors are never crystallized in the presences of the contemporary three-brained beings there, which in other three-brained beings engender the impulse called ‘instinctive shame’; that is to say, the being impulse that maintains what are called ‘morals’ and ‘objective morality.) BTG XXIX

“But as at that period, in the beings of the female sex of that same community France, the feelings of morality and patriarchality were still very strong, they did not adopt that maleficent invention; but the beings of the female sex of the communities called England and America did adopt it, and began to cut their hair. BTG XXXVII

“And it was just those same being-feelings which a couple of centuries ago made the beings of that large community famous among other beings of the whole of this planet in respect of their morality and the pitriarchality of their family foundations. BTG XXXVIII

“‘And in addition, thanks also to the fact that when I first came over to Europe, conditions of life here in respect of morality and patriarchality were entirely in contrast with those conditions in which I was born and brought up, I, seeing and perceiving all this, used to experience a painful feeling of shame and an unaccountable embarrassment. At the same time I noticed that from the effect of the alcohol I drank, not only was the depression I experienced alleviated, but I could look upon it all quite calmly, and even have the wish to participate in this abnormal life, so contradictory of my nature and my established views. BTG XLII

“‘And owing to the instinctive attitudes which, as I have already said, had been acquired during centuries by the local women of Persia without distinction of religion towards morality and patriarchality in family traditions these foreign women were unable to mix with the generai mass of Persian women, with the consequence that from then on, there began to be among us the two categories of women I have mentioned. BTG XLII

“‘And so, respected Doctor, the fundamental cause of my second vice was that being born and brought up in traditions of morality entirely opposed to those here, I came here at an age when the animal passions in a man are especially strong. The ensuing evils for me personally arose chiefly from the fact that I came here while still very young, and, according to the notions here, handsome; and owing to my genuine southern type, a great many women here for whom I represented a new and original type of male, began a regular hunt after me. BTG XLII

“‘Of the useful customs originally contained in the Christian religion and which were introduced by the creators of that religion into the life of its followers for preservation of health and for the maintenance of the foundations of morality necessary for a happy life, nothing now remains except the custom of periodic fasting, that is, of abstaining at certain times of the year from the consumption of certain edible products. BTG XLII

“‘”As regards the people who constantly consume meat or those products which contain the element called ‘Eknokh’, although the appearance of the state of their organism undergoes no change, nevertheless their psyche, especially its chief feature which is sometimes designated by the general word the ‘character’ of man, gradually changes in regard to positiveness and morality for the worse, beyond all recognition. BTG XLII

“But on the continent of Europe I scarcely found a single custom specially created either for purposes of hygiene or for instilling morality among the masses. BTG XLII

“A man comes into the world like a clean sheet of paper, which immediately all around him begin vying with each other to dirty and fill up with education, morality, the information we call knowledge, and with all kinds of feelings of duty, honor, conscience, and so on and so forth. BTG XLVIII