The Fourth Personal Sojourn of Beelzebub on the Planet Earth

“This false idea that arose and was fixed there owing to the said ‘pawnshop progeny’ existed during nearly two of their centuries, and became an inseparable part of the Reason of the majority of them; and only various events proceeding from the mentioned general planetary process effaced it until it ultimately completely disappeared from their common presences.

“But when what is called their ‘cultured existence’ was concentrated on the continent named Europe, and when the time of the maximum intense manifestation of the peculiar illness there named ‘to-wiseacre,’ had again come round—which illness by the way had already long before become subject to the fundamental cosmic law of Heptaparaparshinokh, according to which it had, in respect of intensity, also to function with a certain periodicity—then, to the grief of three-brained beings of the whole of the universe, that Ape question, namely, the question who is descended from whom, again arose, and having become crystallized, again became a part of the presence of the abnormal Reason of your favorites.

“The stimulus for the revival there of this Ape question was this time also a ‘learned’ being, and of course also ‘great,’ but now a ‘learned’ being of quite a ‘new formation’ named Darwin.

“And this ‘great’ learned being, basing his theory on that same logic of theirs, began to ‘prove’ exactly the opposite of what Menitkel had said, namely, that it was they themselves who were descended from these Mister Apes.

“And as for the objective reality of the theories of both these ‘great’ terrestrial ‘learned beings,’ I am reminded of one of the wise sayings of our esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin, namely:

“ ‘They were both very successful, though of course not without luck, in finding the authentic godmother of the incomparable Scheherazade on an old dunghill.’

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