Franz Hartmann, M.D.¹

Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl

You will probably find the following story very improbable; because it seems quite impossible for two chickens, each of which is still in the eggshell, to talk to each other, but for a great magician all sorts of things are possible of which an ordinary person cannot, and in the end there are also things that first then become clear if you look at and examine them very closely.

 Such a magician had once placed two spirits who wished to become his disciples, each in a hen’s egg, in order that they should develop in it and become great hens, capable of cackling and flying; for although they swarm around as spirits and could already see all sorts of things going on in the world, they still needed a material body for their perfection in order to become independent beings, and they could only achieve this through their development in the egg.

 But the characters of the two spirits were very different from each other; for while one of them was constantly raving about the outside world and wanted to know everything that was happening on the chicken yard, the other stayed nicely in his dwelling. Every day one of them came home with news and had a lot to tell the other. Soon he knew that the rooster had entered into an intimate relationship with this or that hen and what the other hens were gossiping about; soon he brought the news that a young rooster had found a gold beetle on a dung heap and had crowed merrily as a result; then he brought the rumor that a war had broken out among the earthworms in a neighboring state, and that a large turkey had devoured many of the combatants. In short, he considered it his purpose in life and his most important task to gather news everywhere. He had no sense for anything else. One day he even found out that Peter, the chief rooster, who was a big bully, had picked a fight with a neighbor; that it was a duel and that the beaks had already been sharpened.

 The chicken spirit brought all this news to the other spirit while it was boiling hot; but he found little interest in it, but said: “Why should I waste my strength by worrying about matters that do not concern me and that would only disturb the peace that I need for my development? My purpose is to build up a body in which I can live permanently, and which, if the shell of my egg breaks, will have wings and feathers so that I can be seen as a well-formed chicken in the chicken yard.”

 So it came about that the wise hen spirit, when his time was up, well-winged, was born out of his dark eggshell into the world of light, and was received before the heavenly fowl in the paradise hen-yard with joyful cackling and crowing, while the inquisitive spirit, wasted time and energy on useless things when a poor, unviable chick came to the new world and soon died of weakness.