mescal: a new artificial paradise. 545 



dnriDg part of the first night. Tbey inight have been the dreams of 

 a Baudelaire or of an Aubrey Beardsley. I would see figures with 

 prodigious limbs, or strangely dwarfed and curtailed, or impossible 

 combinations such as five or six fish, the color of canaries, floating 

 about in air in a gold wire cage. But these were i^urely mental images, 

 like the visions seen in a dream by a distempered brain. 



'■Of the many sensatious of which my body had been the theater 

 during three hours, not the least strange was the feeling I experienced 

 on coming back into a normal condition. The recovery did not proceed 

 gradually, but the whole outer and inner world of reality came back, as 

 it were, with a bound. And for a moment it seemed strange. It was 

 the sensation — only much intensified — which everyone has known on 

 coming out into the light of day from an afternoon performance at a 

 theater, where one has sat in an artificial light of gas and lamps, the 

 spectator of a fictitious world of action. As one pours out with the 

 crowd into the street, the ordinary world, by force of contrast with the 

 sensational scenes just witnessed, breaks in upon one with almost a 

 sense of unreality. The house, the aspect of the street, even the light 

 of day appear a little foreign for a few moments. During these moments 

 everything strikes the mind as odd and unfamiliar, or at least with a 

 greater degree of objectivity. Such was my feeling with regard to my 

 old and habitual self. During the period of intoxication the connec- 

 tion between the normal condition of my body and my intelligence had 

 broken — my body had become in a manner a stranger to my reason — 

 so that now on reasserting itself it seemed, with referei-ce to my reason, 

 which had remained perfectly sane and alert, for a moment suflticiently 

 unfamiliar for me to become conscious of its individual and peculiar 

 character. It was as if I had unexpectedly attained an objective 

 knowledge of my own personality. I saw, as it were, my normal state 

 of being with the eyes of a i^erson who sees the street on coming out 

 of the theater in broad day. 



"This sensation also brought out the independence of the mind dur- 

 ing the period of intoxication. It alone appeared to have escaped the 

 ravages of the drug; it alone remained sane during a general delirium, 

 vindicating, so it seemed, the majesty of its own impersonal nature. 

 It had reigned for a while, I now felt, as an autocrat, without ministers 

 and their ofticiousness. Henceforth I should be more or less conscious 

 of the interdependence of body and brain; a slight headache, a touch 

 of indigestion, or what not, would be able to effect wbat a general 

 intoxication of my senses and nerves could not touch." 



I next made experiments on two poets, whose names are both well 

 known. One is interested in mystical matters, an excellent subject for 

 visions, and very familiar with various vision -producing drugs and proc- 

 esses. His heart, however, is not very strong. While he obtained 

 the visions, he found the effects of mescal on his breathing somewhat 

 unpleasant; he much prefers hasheesh, though recognizing that its 

 SM 97 35 



