Study of Beelzebub's Tales

32.561

“He was greatly impressed by this and devoted himself entirely to this question which interested him.

32.561

“Continuing to observe and to study, he almost succeeded in understanding the reason. But when later he began making practical experiments for the elucidation of certain details, well it was just then that there began to be manifested toward him that particularity proper to the learned beings of ‘new formation’ there.

32.561

“This particularity of the learned beings of the Earth of new formation is called ‘pecking to death.’

32.561

“As this honest Austro-Hungarian learned being then began making his elucidating experiments not as all the learned beings of the Earth of new formation had in general become mechanized to do, he was, according to the custom there, very meticulously ‘pecked to death.’

32.561

“And this process of the pecking to death of this poor Mesmer was then so effective that it has already passed by its own momentum to the learned beings of the Earth from generation to generation.

32.561

“For instance, all the books now existing there on the question of this hypnotism—and of such books there are thousands there—always begin by saying that this Mesmer was nothing more nor less than a rogue with an itching palm and a charlatan of the first water, but that our ‘honest’ and ‘great’ learned beings very soon saw through him and prevented his doing any kind of mischief.

32.561-2

“The more the learned beings of recent times of this peculiar planet are themselves personally, in the sense of ‘idiotism,’ ‘squared,’ the more they criticize Mesmer and say or write concerning him every possible kind of absurdity to bring him into contempt.

32.562

“And in doing this, they criticize exactly that humble and honest learned being of their planet, who, if he had not been pecked to death would have revived that science, which alone is absolutely necessary to them and by means of which alone, perhaps, they might be saved from the consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer.

32.562

“There is no harm in remarking here that just when I was leaving that planet forever, precisely the same was being repeated there as had occurred to this Mesmer. Namely, on this occasion, an honest and humble learned being there from among the beings of the community France, after persistent and conscientious labors came across the possibility of curing that terrible disease, the spreading of which also had in recent times assumed a general planetary character.