Certainly haschisch has a more vehement effect on one than opium; it is more troubling, more ecstatic, more malign, malignant, insinuating, more evocative, more visionary, more unseizable; it lifts one across infinite horizons, it carries us passionately over the passionate waves of seas in storms--of unknown storms on unseen seas--into not even eternities, nor into chaos, nor into Heaven nor into Hell (though these may whirl before one's vision), but into incredible existences, over which no magician rules, over which no witch presides. It can separate ourselves from ourselves; change our very shapes into shapeless images; drown us in the deep depths of annihilation, out of which we slowly emerge; bury us under the oldest roots of the earth; give us death in life and life in death; give us sleep that is not sleep, and waking dreams that are not waking dreams. There is nothing, human or inhuman, moral or immoral, that this drug cannot give us. Yet, all the time, we know not what it takes from us; nor what deadly exchange we may have to give; nor what intoxication can be produced beyond its intoxication; nor if, as with Coleridge, who took opium, it might not become "almost a habit of the Soul." Imagine a universe in disorder, peopled by strange beings, that have no relation with each other, whose speech one supposes is jargon; where such houses as there are are built in different ways--none with straight lines, many in triangles; where the animals are unlike ours, some smaller than ants; where there are no churches, no apparent streets; but innumerable brothels. When one sees fires the smoke goes downward; flames leap out of the soil and turn into living serpents. Now one sees a serpent return into his proper flame. There seem to be no gods, nor idols nor priests nor shrines. The seas storm the skies and swallow up Hell; and all that lives and all that dies seems indistinguishable. Suppose that--in an opium dream--Satan turns God. The soil might wither at his touch; Lesbians lament the loss of Lesbianism; and the word of God be abolished. I have used the word vehement in regard to Haschisch. It violates the imagination, ravishes the senses; can disturb one physically; but never, if taken in measure, prove destructive. This green drug can create unheard-of excitations, exasperations; can create contagious laughter, evoke comical images, supernatural and fantastic.