"According to the investigations of our countryman, it seems that the earliest ancestors of the beings of the community that was later called 'Greece' were obliged, during the frequent storms at sea that hindered them in their 'marine occupations,' to seek refuge from the rams and winds in sheltered places, where they played various 'games' they had invented, to 'kill time.'
"As it later became clear, these ancient fishermen at first amused themselves with such games as children play there —but children, it must be remarked, who have not yet gone to school, for today those who go to school have so much homework to do, consisting chiefly of learning by rote the poetry composed by various candidate hasnamusses that the poor children never have time to play any games at all.
"In short, these poor bored fishermen first played ordinary children's games long since customary there, but later, when one of them invented a new game called 'pouring from the empty into the void,' they were all so pleased with it that from then on they amused themselves with that alone.
"This game consisted in formulating some question or other, always about some nonsense, that is to say, a question about some deliberate piece of absurdity, and the one to whom the question was addressed had to answer as plausibly as possible.
"Well, it was just this game that became the cause of everything that happened later.
"It turned out that among those ancient bored fishermen several were so clever and ingenious that, following the principle of that curious game, they became expert in inventing very long explanations.
"And when one of them discovered how to make what was afterward called 'parchment' from the skin of the fish called 'shark,' some of these skilful fellows, just to swagger before their companions, even began inscribing these long explanations of theirs on these fishskins, employing the conventional signs invented earlier for another game called 'mousetrap. '
"Still a little later, when these bored fishermen had been replaced by their descendants, the latter inherited these inscribed fishskins, as well as the craze for this peculiar game, and these various inventions, both their ancestors' and their own, were given for the first time the high-sounding name of 'science.'
"And from then on, as the craze for 'cooking up' these 'sciences' passed from generation to generation, the beings of that group whose ancestors had been simple Asiatic fishermen became 'specialists' in inventing sciences of every sort.
"These sciences, moreover, also passed from generation to generation and certain of them have reached contemporary beings of that planet almost unchanged.
"Hence it is that almost half of what are called the 'ego plastikoori' arising in the Reason of the contemporary beings of that ill-fated planet—from which, in general, what is called a 'world outlook' is formed in beings—are crystallized just from the 'truths' invented by those bored fishermen and their descendants.
"As regards the ancient shepherds who later founded the powerful community called 'Rome,' their ancestors also were often forced, on account of bad weather, to seek refuge for their flocks in sheltered places, and to pass the time together somehow or other.
"And so, since they were together, they did a lot of talking But when everything had been talked out and they felt bored, one of them suggested that as a relief they should take up the occupation which they were the first to call cinque contra uno—five against one—a pastime which has been preserved under the same name among their descendants down to the present time.
"As long as only the beings of the male sex engaged in that pastime everything went 'smoothly and peacefully,' but when a little later their 'passive halves,' that is to say, their women, joined in and, immediately appreciating it, soon became addicted to it, they gradually attained such 'finesses' in this occupation that if our arch-cunning Lucifer himself were to rack his honorable brains, he could not invent even a tithe of the 'turns' these erstwhile shepherds invented and prepared for the beings of succeeding generations of that ill-starred planet.
"Now, my boy, when these two independent groups of terrestrial beings multiplied and, in accordance with the usual aim of all communities there during all periods of their existence, acquired every variety of 'effective means' for reciprocal destruction, they began carrying out these processes with other independent communities—for the most part, of course, with less powerful communities—and occasionally between themselves.
"Here it is very interesting to note that during intervals of peace between these two communities—who were almost equal in the possession of efficient means for reciprocal destruction—the beings of both these groups, whose places of existence were close to each other, often came into contact and had friendly relations, with the result that little by little each picked up from the other those specialties that had originally been invented by their ancestors. In short, the result of the frequent contacts between these two communities was that the Greek beings, borrowing from the Romans all their refinements of 'sexual turns,' began organizing their what were called 'Athenian nights,' while the Roman beings, having learned from the Greeks how to cook up 'sciences,' composed their later very famous 'Roman law.'
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