Observations placeholder

Beelzebub's tales to his grandson

"I charge you further—again, of course, as the heir on whom, as is usual, will devolve the fulfillment of the obligations his predecessor took upon himself and which, for some reason or other, were left unfulfilled—to pay special attention to a question which greatly interested me but which I personally was unable to elucidate, as it was still premature to do so, that is, I charge you to find out what form, maleficent for their descendants—if, of course, by that time their descendants continue to arise—has been taken by the 'disease,' very widespread then, which one of their Misters, by the name of Onanson, called 'writer's itch. '

"Indeed, my boy, having had a more or less close relationship with many of them during my stay there, I soon found out that almost every one of them either had already written a book, was just writing one at the moment, or was getting ready to 'burst into print. '

"This peculiar 'disease,' prevalent among almost all the beings of this continent, without distinction of age or sex, had assumed epidemic proportions among the 'youth,' that is, those who are just at the beginning of responsible age, particularly those with runny noses and many pimples on
their faces.

"In this connection you should take note that there flourishes among these beings one feature of the strange psyche of your favorites which has become rooted in their collective existence and which may be formulated thus 'the concentration of interest on any idea that has accidentally become the question of the day.

"And so some of them, who turned out to be a little more 'cunning' than the rest, and in whom the data for the being-impulse called 'instinctively to refrain from all manifestations which may lead one's fellow-beings into error' were more atrophied, organized various 'schools' and composed all sorts of 'manuals,' in which they showed in detail just what the sequence of words should be so that all written expositions should be better perceived and assimilated by the reader.

"As a result, all those who attended these 'schools' or read these 'manuals,' who were themselves in regard to being and to their knowledge of reality exactly such types as our teacher, Mullah Nasr Eddin, refers to as 'nullities emitting an atmosphere of unendurable vibrations,' began to wiseacre
according to all these rules. And from then on, since the process of reading had become an organic need of the beings of this new group, thanks to various other abnormalities fixed in the conditions of their ordinary existence, and since, moreover, it was possible to appreciate the contents of any work only by reading it through, all the beings of this continent, seduced by every kind of 'flashy' title, began to read and read, until finally it became definitely noticeable that their mentation, already sufficiently 'diluted' without this, became ever more and more 'diluted. '

"I was not speaking lightly when I said, 'if by that time their descendants continue to arise,' because I then noticed the same extraordinary singularity with regard to the new conformation of the planetary body of beings of the female sex that I had once noticed long before in the process of the
ordinary existence of these strange three-brained beings, and parallel with this, I carefully observed all its consequences.

"This curious phenomenon first occurred there before the loss of the continent of Atlantis, in the process of existence of a small group of three brained beings originating from various large communities of that time. These beings existed in isolation on the then famous island called 'Balakhanira,' which was situated to the east of the continent of Atlantis, and was engulfed within the planet at the same time as Atlantis itself.

"This small group died out owing to the same strange particularity of the formation of the planetary body of the beings of the female sex, and the manner in which the continuation of their species ceased was then called by the learned members of the Society of Akhldanns 'dezsoop-sentozirosso

"This extraordinary phenomenon, which took place in the course of several centuries before their race finally disappeared, was the gradual narrowing of what is called the 'pelvis' in the beings of the female sex

"This progressive narrowing of the pelvis took place at such a rate that two centuries before their race finally vanished, the 'appearance in God's world' of their so to say haphazard conceptions was effected by the means then called 'sitrik,' and now called 'Caesarian section. '