Beelzebubs-Tales-to-His-Grandson-by-G-I-Gurdjieff

iefly in what way and in what progression these favorites of yours becameautomatically sorted out into their different celebrated 'classes,' and also howlater they began by themselves to subdivide into 'castes. '"Whenever, through various chance circumstances, a substantial group ofyour favorites concentrates somewhere in order to exist together, certain ofthem in whom for some reason or other the consequences of the properties ofthe organ kundabuffer have already been thoroughly crystallized—whichgives to their common presence the impulse for what is called 'cunning'—andin whose hands there are at that time many different what are called 'means ofintimidation,' or what they themselves call 'weapons,' soon set themselvesapart from the other beings and, putting themselves at their head, constitutethe beginnings of what is called the 'ruling class.'"And further, since in all three-brained beings of the planet Earth,particularly of recent periods, the sacred being-impulse called 'Conscience'takes no part in the functioning of their ordinary consciousness—as a result ofwhich they lack even the desire to make any conscious being-effort at all—the beings who have thus set themselves apart as the ruling class, making useof these 'means of intimidation,' compel the other beings of the given group toproduce for them even those efforts which every being should without failmake for himself in his ordinary being-existence."And the other beings of the group, also for the same reasons, not wishingto produce these being-efforts themselves, least of all for others, and at thesame time fearing the means of intimidation of the beings of the ruling class,begin to resort to all kinds of cunning in order to unload 'onto their neighbor'sback' the being-efforts inevitably required by the ruling class."The usual result is that the beings of every such group gradually sortthemselves out and fall into different cate-