344 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
mind, but the chain of causes is sufficiently obvious
now.”
I had never taken kindly to medicine. Its unscientific
procedure, its arrogance, its snobbishness, and its
empiricism all combined to disgust me. I had simply
gone to the hospital because my father was bent on it,
and wouldn’t put up the money for anything else. I
wanted to be an engineer. I was keen as mustard on
bicycles and automobiles. Even as a boy I had had a
sort of workshop of my own. The greatest pleasure of
my childhood had been the rare visits to my mother’s
father, who in his time had been a great inventor and
done an immense amount of work relative to the
mechanical perfection of railway travelling.
When the war broke out I had gone straight to the
engineering shops; and I became a flying man rather
against my will, on account of my weight and the
dearth of pilots.
I broke off in my enthusiastic harangue, because
King Lamus had stopped on the crest of the ridge
which divided the strangers’ house at the Abbey from
the main buildings.
“The climb has put you out of breath,” he said.
“ Take a sniff of this; it will put you all right in a
second.”
I pushed the man’s hand away impatiently, and the
little heap of powder fell to the ground.
“‘ Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ said Basil laughing.
I realised how rude I had been, and began to apologise.
“ That’s all right,’’ he said. ‘‘ But, of course, you
aren’t going to get out of it as easily as that. You
don’t give up eating mutton because you ate too much
one day and got indigestion. You'll find heroin pretty
useful when you know how to use it. However, your
gesture just now was automatic. It was evidence that
your unconscious or true will objects to your taking
heroin. So far so good for the negative side. But the
question is, what does your true will actually want you
to do in a positive way?”