The Fruits of Former Civilizations and the Blossoms of the Contemporary

“This was possible because, although, in the presences of your favorites, especially the contemporary ones, the Bobbin-kandelnost of one of their brains may be entirely used up, nevertheless the beings themselves would some- times continue to exist for quite a long time.

“For instance, it often happens there, that, owing to their specifically abnormal existence, the contents of one of the Bobbin-kandelnosts may be used up in one of them, and if it is of the moving-center, or as they themselves call it, the ‘spinal-brain,’ then although such a contemporary three-brained being there continues to ‘think’ and to ‘feel,’ yet he has already lost the possibility of intentionally directing the parts of his planetary body.

“Here it is interesting to notice that when one of your contemporary favorites already partially dies for good in this way, then their contemporary Zirlikners, or as they are called ‘physicians,’ look upon such a death as most certainly a disease, and with every kind of wiseacring that has become proper to them, start treating it; and they give these supposed diseases every sort of name consonant with an ancient language utterly unknown to them, called ‘Latin.’

“The very widely spread diseases there have such names as the following: ‘hemiplegia,’ ‘paraplegia,’ ‘paralysis progressiva,’ ‘paralysis essentialis,’ ‘tabes dorsalis,’ ‘paralysis agitans,’ ‘sclerosis disseminata,’ and so on and so forth.

“Such deaths by thirds, there on the planet Earth which has taken your fancy, have occurred particularly frequently during the last two centuries, and they occur to those of your favorites who, thanks either to their profession, or to one of their what are called ‘passions,’ arising and ac- quired by the beings belonging to all large and small communities there, on account of the same abnormally ar- ranged conditions of their ordinary being-existence, have during their being-existence lived through in a greater or smaller degree the contents of the Bobbin-kandelnost of one or another of their being-brains.