The Third Flight of Beelzebub to the Planet Earth

“If you wish, my dear boy, I shall also tell you a little of the history of the rise of this group of beings of the continent Ashhark,” Beelzebub said to Hassein.

“Yes, Grandfather, yes. I shall listen to you with great interest and much gratitude,” replied his grandson.

Then Beelzebub began:

“A long, long time before that period to which my present tale relates, namely, long before that second great catastrophe to that ill-fated planet, while the continent Atlantis was still existing and at the height of its splendor, one of the ordinary three-centered beings of that continent ‘invented’—as my latest detailed investigations and researches cleared up—that the powdered horn of a being of that particular exterior form then called a ‘Pirmaral’ was very effective against what they call ‘diseases’ of every kind. His ‘invention’ was afterwards widely spread by various ‘freaks’ on your planet, and also there was gradually crystallized in the Reason of the ordinary beings there an illusory directing factor, from which, by the way, there is formed in the whole of the presence of each of your favorites, especially of the contemporary ones, the Reason of what is called their ‘waking-existence,’ which factor is the chief cause of the frequent change in convictions accumulated in them.

“Owing to just this factor, crystallized in the presences of the three-brained beings of your planet of that period, it became the rule that anyone, as they say, who ‘fell ill’ of some disease or other invariably had to be given this powdered horn to swallow.

“It is not without interest to remark that Pirmarals breed there at the present time also; but, since contemporary beings take them merely for one of the species of being they collectively call ‘deer,’ they have no special name for them.

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