Vedere Napok e poi—pro patriad—mori 113
of whatever nature operates by destroying temporarily
the inhibitions of education.
The ordinary drunken man loses the veneer of
civilisation. But if you get the right man, the adminis-
tration of a drug is quite likely to suppress his mental
faculties, with the result that his genius is set free.
Coleridge is a case in point. When he happened to
get the right quantity of laudanum in him, he dreamed
Kubla Khan, one of the supreme treasures of the
language.
And why is it incomplete ? Because a man called from
Porlock on business and called him back to his normal
self, so that he forgot all but a few lines of the poem.
Similarly, we have Herbert Spencer taking morphia
every day of his life, decade after decade. Without
morphia, he would simply have been a querulous
invalid, preoccupied with bodily pain. With it, he
was the genius whose philosophy summarised the
thought of the nineteenth century.
But Lou and I were born with a feeling for romance
and adventure. The ecstasy of first love was already
enough to take us out of ourselves to a certain extent.
The action of the drugs intensified and spiritualised
these possibilities.
The atmosphere of Capri, and the genius of Feccles
for preventing any interference with our pleasure,
made our first fortnight on the island an unending trance
of unearthly beauty. |
He never allowed us a chance to be bored, and yet,
he never intruded. He took all the responsibilities off
our hands, he arranged excursions to Anacapri, to the
Villa of Tiberius and to the various grottos. Once or
twice he suggested a wild night in Naples, and we
revelled in the peculiar haunts of vice with which that
city abounds.
Nothing shocked us, nothing surprised us. Every
incident of life was the striking of a separate note in
the course of an indescribable symphony.
He introduced us to the queerest people, drove us