The Fourth Personal Sojourn of Beelzebub on the Planet Earth

“This unexpected constatation shocked him so profoundly that thereafter he devoted the whole of himself exclusively to be able at any cost to unravel this and understand.

“First of all he decided to attain without delay such a ‘potency’ as would give him the strength and possibility to be quite sincere with himself, that is to say, to be able to conquer those impulses which had become habitual in the functioning of his common presence from the many heterogeneous associations arising and proceeding in him and which were started in him by all sorts of accidental shocks coming from outside and also engendered within him, namely, the impulses called ‘self-love,’ ‘pride,’ ‘vanity,’ and so on.

“And when, after incredible what are called ‘organic’ and ‘psychic’ efforts, he attained to this, he then without any mercy for these being-impulses which had become inherent in his presence, began to think and recall just when and what various being-impulses had arisen in his presence during the period preceding all this, and how he had consciously or unconsciously reacted to them.

“Analyzing himself in this manner, he began to recall just which impulses evoked which reactions in him, in his independently spiritualized parts, that is to say, in his body, in his feelings and in his thoughts, and the state of his essence when he reacted to anything more or less attentively, and how and when, in consequence of such reactions of his, he had manifested consciously with his “I” or had acted automatically under the direction of his instinct alone.

295