The Fruits of Former Civilizations and the Blossoms of the Contemporary

“The circumstances were these: in descending to the planet Earth for the sixth and last time, I proposed to attain, at any cost, the final elucidation to myself of all the genuine causes why the psyche of those three-brained beings, which should be like the psyche of the rest of the three-brained beings of our Great Universe, had on that planet become so exceptionally strange.

“And having during my investigations repeatedly con- stated that a fundamental cause of the various abnormalities of the general psyche of the contemporary beings was what is called ‘civilization’ sown by those two large groups of beings called Greeks and Romans, I was obliged to in- quire into certain details about them also.

“But as I was fully occupied at that time with my re- searches concerning the activities of the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash, I commissioned the elucidation of the history of the arising of these two independent groupings of your favorites—in respect of what is called, their ‘sub- jective-being-Being’—to that same being of our tribe who as I have already told you, still carries on an ‘undertaker’s business’ in a large city on the continent of Europe down to the present time.

“From the investigations of this countryman of ours, it seems that long ago before the period to which my tale about the majestic city of Babylon referred, namely, at the time when the process of the existence of those strange beings was proceeding mainly on the continent Asia alone, and when their chief center of culture was Tikliamish, there were on that said continent of Europe, which is now the chief place of existence of your favorites, as yet no definitely organized communities.

“There then chiefly existed on that continent two- brained and one-brained beings called ‘wild quadrupeds’ and ‘reptiles,’ but of your favorites, the biped beings, there were then on that continent only a number of small groups, almost as ‘wild’ as the ‘quadrupeds’ themselves.

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