Study of Beelzebub's Tales

28.391

“Now, strictly speaking, about this terrestrial three-brained being Lentrohamsanin, I would have to fulfill my promise and to explain to you in detail about the expression Hasnamuss, but I prefer to do so a little later in the proper place of the sequence in this tale.

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“The mentioned maleficent ‘invention,’ or as they themselves, that is, the contemporary terrestrial learned beings, name such an invention of a learned being there of ‘new formation,’ a ‘composition,’ or even a ‘creation,’ was actualized, as I have already told you, two or more centuries before the time when, during my fifth sojourn there, I first reached the city of Babylon, where partly by coercion and partly voluntarily, learned beings had been assembled from the surface of almost the whole of the planet.

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“The maleficent composition of that learned being of former centuries reached the learned beings of the said Babylonian epoch by means of what is called a ‘Kashireitleer,’ on which this invention was engrossed by the said learned Lentrohamsanin himself.

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“And from that day, he made preparations for the actualizing of that decision of his.

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“With the help of his many slaves he first prepared a Kashireitleer such as had never before existed.

“At that period of the flow of time on the planet Earth, the Kashireitleers were generally made from one or another part of the hide of a quadruped being called there ‘buffalo,’ but Lentrohamsanin made his Kashireitleer from a hundred buffalo hides joined together.

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“These Kashireitleers were replaced there later by what is called ‘parchment.’

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“Well, when this unprecedented Kashireitleer was ready, the subsequently great Lentrohamsanin inscribed upon it his invention concerning a topic which, indeed, it had occurred to nobody to discuss before, and for which, in truth, there was no reason why it should have been.

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“Namely, in those wiseacrings of his, he then criticized in every way the existing order of collective existence.

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“This Kashireitleer began thus:

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“‘Man’s greatest happiness consists in not being dependent on any other personality whatsoever, and in being free from the influence of any other person, whoever he may be!’

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“‘Haven’t we to labor and sweat to get the barley indispensable to us to live and not to starve to death like chained dogs?

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“‘Our chiefs, guides, and counselors are always telling us about some other sort of world, supposedly so much better than here among us on the Earth, and where life is in every respect beatific for the souls of those men who have lived worthily here on the Earth.

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“‘Don’t we live here now “worthily”?

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“‘Don’t we always labor and sweat for our daily bread?

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“‘If all that our chiefs and counselors tell us is true and their own way of living here on the Earth really corresponds to what is required of their souls for the other world, then of course God ought, and even must, in this world also, give more possibilities to them than to us ordinary mortals.

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“‘If all that our chiefs and counselors tell and try to make us believe is really true, let them prove it to us, ordinary mortals, by facts.

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“‘Let them prove it to us, for instance, that they can at least change a pinch of the common sand, in which, thanks to our sweat, our daily bread arises, into bread.

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“‘If our present chiefs and counselors do this, then I myself will be the first to run and kneel and kiss their feet.

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“‘But meanwhile, as this is not so, we ourselves must struggle and we ourselves must strive hard for our real happiness and for our real freedom and also to free ourselves from the need of having to sweat.

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“‘It is true that for eight months of the year we now have no trouble in obtaining our daily bread; but then, how we must labor those four summer months and exhaust ourselves getting the barley we need!

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“‘Only he who sows and mows that barley knows the hard labor required.

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“‘True, for eight months we are free, but only from physical labors, and for this, our consciousness, namely, our dearest and highest part, must remain day and night in slavery to these illusory ideas which are always being dinned into us by our chiefs and counselors.

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“‘No, enough! We ourselves, without our present chiefs and counselors who have become such without our onsent, must strive for our real freedom and our real happiness.

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“‘And we can only obtain real freedom and real happiness if we all act as one, that is to say, all for one and one for all. But for this, we must first destroy all that is old.

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“‘And we must do so to make room for the new life we shall ourselves create that will give us real freedom and real happiness.

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“‘Down with dependence on others!

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“‘We ourselves will be masters of our own circumstances and no longer they, who rule our lives and do so without our knowledge and without our consent.

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“‘Our lives must be governed and guided by those whom we ourselves shall elect from our midst, that is by men only from amongst those who themselves struggle for our daily barley.

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“‘And we must elect these governors and counselors on the basis of equal rights, without distinction of sex or age, by universal, direct, equal, and open ballot.’

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“Thus ended the said famous Kashireitleer.

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“When this subsequent Universal Hasnamuss, Lentrohamsanin, had finished inscribing this Kashireitleer, indeed unprecedented there, he arranged an enormous and costly banquet to which he invited all the learned beings from all Nievia, taking upon himself all their traveling expenses; and at the end of this banquet, he showed them his Kashireitleer.

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“When the learned beings then gathered at that free feast from almost the whole of Nievia saw that indeed unprecedented Kashireitleer, they were at first so astounded that they became, as it is said there, as if ‘petrified’ and only after a considerable time did they gradually begin looking at each other with dumbfounded glances, and exchanging opinions in whispers.

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“And those to blame for the final destruction of these said usages and customs that still remained in certain communities, were those learned beings who were then assembled in the city of Babylon.

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“And they were then to blame in this respect owing to the following:

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“When owing to that famous question of the Beyond, they organized the ‘general-planetary-conference’ of all the learned beings there, there happened to be also among the learned beings who went to Babylon on their own accord, the great-grandson of Lentrohamsanin himself, who had also become a learned being.

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“And he took with him, there to the city of Babylon, an exact copy of the mentioned Kashireitleer, but made on papyrus, the original of which had been inscribed by his great-grandfather and which he had obtained by inheritance, and at the very height of the ‘frenzy’ concerning the ‘question-of-the-soul’ during one of the last big general meetings of the learned beings, he read aloud the contents of that maleficent ‘invention’ of his great-grandfather’s; whereupon, it occurred—as it had also become proper to the ‘sorry-learned-beings’ of this planet, thanks to their strange Reason—that from one question which interested them, they at once passed to quite another, namely, from the question ‘of-the-soul’ to the question of what is called ‘politics.’