"Upon the contrary, the time that has passed since you drank the liquid contents of that fungus fruit has only been that which permitted you to fall upon your knees. You swallowed the liquor when I handed you the shell cup; you dropped upon your knees, and then instantly awoke. See," he said; "in corroboration of my assertion the shell of the fungus fruit at your feet is still dripping with the liquid you did not drink. Time has been annihilated. Under the influence of this potent earth-bred narcoto-intoxicant, your dream begun inside of eternity; you did not pass into it." "You say," I interrupted, "that I dropped upon my knees, that I have experienced the hallucination of intoxication, that the experiences of my vision occurred during the second of time that was required for me to drop upon my knees." "Yes." "Then by your own argument you demonstrate that eternity requires time, for even a millionth part of a second is time, as much so as a million of years." "You mistake," he replied, "you misinterpret my words. I said that all you experienced in your eternity of suffering and pleasure, occurred between the point when you touched the fungus fruit to your lips, and that when your knees struck the stone." "That consumed time," I answered. "Did I assert," he questioned, "that your experiences were scattered over that entire period?" "No." "May not all that occurred to your mind have been crushed into the second that accompanied the mental impression produced by the liquor, or the second of time that followed, or any other part of that period, or a fraction of any integral second of that period?" "I can not say," I answered, "what part of the period the hallucination, as you call it, occupied." "You admit that so far as your conception of time is concerned, the occurrences to which you refer may have existed in either an inestimable fraction of the first, the second, or the third part of the period." "Yes," I replied, "yes; if you are correct in that, they were illusions." "Let me ask you furthermore," he said; "are you sure that the flash that bred your hallucination was not instantaneous, and a part of neither the first, second, nor third second?" "Continue your argument." "I will repeat a preceding question with a slight modification. May not all that occurred to your mind have been crushed into the space between the second of time that preceded the mental impression produced by the liquor, and the second that followed it? Need it have been a part of either second, or of time at all? Indeed, could it have been a part of time if it were instantaneous?" "Go on." "Suppose the entity that men call the soul of man were in process of separation from the body. The process you will admit would occupy time, until the point of liberation was reached. Would not dissolution, so far as the separation of matter and spirit is concerned at its critical point be instantaneous?" I made no reply.