"
"It does not follow, I presume, that all the visions induced by the
imbibing of opium, or what you term drashkil, are pleasant ones?"
"By no means. You cannot have forgotten what De Quincey has to say on
that score. But whether they are pleasant or the contrary, I accept them
as so much experience, and in so far I am satisfied. You look
incredulous, but I tell you, sir, that what I see, and what I
undergo--subjectively--while under the influence of drashkil make up for
me an experience as real, that dwells as vividly in my memory and that
can be brought to mind like any other set of recollections, as if it
were built up brick by brick, fact by fact, out of the incidents of
everyday life. And all such experiences are valuable in this wise: that
whatever I see while under the influence of drashkil I see, as it were,
with the eyes of genius. I breathe a keener atmosphere; I have finer
intuitions; the brain is no longer clogged with that part of me which is
mortal; in whatever imaginary scenes I assist, whether actor or
spectator, matters not; I seem to discern the underlying meaning of
things--I hear the low faint beating of the hidden pulses of the world.
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