LIPD: ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 63 
nature? May not the answer be something like 
this? Were the soul, at its lirst creation, in¬ 
troduced directly into the world v/here truth is 
an intuition, and stand in the dazzling light 
of its own essence, the dreadful sublimity of the 
view might prove its annihilation. We ac¬ 
cordingly pass first through an apprenticeship, 
in which we have nothing colossal either to 
learn or to do; and eternal verities dawn on us 
slowly, instead of breaking in like lightning. 
. . . Without this slow indoctrination, the soul 
might have flamed out in dazzling momentary 
irradiance, and then been extinguished in 
eternal nothingness. . . 
That all this is purely speculative, we must 
admit. Such a view was, perhaps, influenced to 
some extent by the author’s own experiments, in 
which he felt assured of the severance of his 
“soul” from his body, under the influence of 
hasheesh. Yet, such drugs have often been the 
means of remarkable interior illumination, and 
great flights of philosophical speculation—wit¬ 
ness Paul Blood’s remarkable pamphlet, “An 
Anaesthetic Revelation,” summarized by Wil¬ 
liam James, in his “Memories and Studies.” Per¬ 
haps Truth may be glimpsed at such times, 
more truly than in our ordinary, wake-a-day 
world. 
And the whole physical Universe? What is 
the meaning of that? Western science has no 
answer. It says: Let us take things as we find 
them, without seeking for ultimate causes. Or¬ 
iental philosophy, on the other hand, has con¬ 
cerned itself greatly with such metaphysical 
speculations. Their belief is that this entire 
