THE EQUINOX
by sending all business to the devil, the solitude difficulty by
borrowing a vacant flat; but the British climate beat me. I
hope one day to be rich enough to build a little house
expressly for the purpose; but at present there is on the
horizon no cloud even so large as the littlest finger of
aman!
If only, therefore, I could reduce the necessary period to a
few hours !
Moreover, I could persuade other people that mysticism
was not all folly without insisting on their devoting a lifetime
to studying under me; and if only I could convince a few
competent observers—in such a matter I distrust even myself
—Science would be bound to follow and to investigate, clear
up the matter once for all, and, as I believed, and believe, arm
itself with a new weapon ten thousand times more potent than
the balance and the microscope.
Imagine me, therefore, if you please, selecting these few
facts from the millions of others in the armoury of my brain,
dovetailing them, and at last formulating an hypothesis verifi-
able by experiment.
III
“But I evolve all these mysteries in the profound abyss of
Mind.”—ZOROASTER.
This was my hypothesis :
“Perhaps hashish is the drug which ‘loosens the girders
of the soul,’ but is in itself neither good nor bad. Perhaps,
as Baudelaire thinks, it merely exaggerates and distorts the
natural man and his mood of the moment.” The whole of
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