1940s Thoughts on Exopheremones

"The mystery of drugs: How did savages all over the world, in every climate, discover in frozen tundras or remote jungles the one plant, often similar to countless others of the same species, which could, if only by a very elaborate process, give them the fantasies, intoxication, freedom from care? How unless by help from the plants themselves? Opium-smokers in the East became surrounded by cats, dogs, birds and even spiders, which are attracted to the smell. The craving for the drug proceeds from the brain-cells which revolt and overrule the will. The Siberian tribes who eat Agaric say, 'The Agaric orders me to do this or that'-the Hashish smokers feel this too. Horses and cattle which become 'indigo eaters' continue to gorge till they drop dead. Peyotl, one of the rarest and most obscure drugs, yet gave its name to the range of uninhabited mountains where it is found.
The Greeks and Romans looked on alcohol and opium as the lovely twin reconcilers to living and dying presented to man by Dionysus and Morpheus,- God-given because of their extraordinary sympathy to us, and because of the mystery of their discovery. If man is part of nature, he may be better understood by his parasites than he knows.
Since there are flowers whose fertilization is impossible except by means of insects, flowers which eat insects and therefore which understand them, since this low and unconscious order has these correspondences with the one above it, may there not be animals and birds who make use of man and study his habits, and if they, why not also insects and vegetables? What grape, to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable. Happiness is in the imagination. What we perform is always inferior to what we imagine; yet day-dreaming brings guilt; there is no happiness except through freedom from Angst,and only creative work, communion with nature and helping others, are Angst-free."
'Palinurus'

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