action, but never the whole. The central bureau of nerves,
what in some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without
disturbance, like a Government office. The great wheels of intelligence
turned idly in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no grist. I have gone
on for half an hour at a time, counting my strokes and forgetting the
hundreds. I flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid
that, as a low form of consciousness. And what a pleasure it was! What a
hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about! There is nothing captious
about a man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in
life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and
longaevous like a tree.

There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which accompanied what
I may call the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of my
abstraction. What philosophers call _me_ and _not-me_, _ego_ and _non
ego_, preoccupied me whether I would or no. There was less _me_ and
more _not-me_ than I was accustomed to expect. I looked on upon somebody
else, who managed the paddling; I was aware of somebody else's feet
against the stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more intimate
relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks. Nor
this alone: something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a province of
my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or
perhaps for the somebody else who did the paddling. I had dwindled into
quite a little thing in a corner of myself. I was isolated in my own
skull. Thoughts presented themselves unbidden; they were not my
thoughts, they were plainly some one else's; and I considered them like
a part of the landscape. I take it, in short, that I was about as near
Nirvana as would be convenient in practical life; and if this be so, I
make the Buddhists my sincere compliments; 'tis an agreeable state, not
very consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a
money point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, and one that
sets a man superior to alarms. It may be best figured by supposing
yourself to get dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it. I have a
notion that open-air labourers must spend a large portion of their days
in this ecstatic stupor, which explains their high composure and
endurance. A pity to go to the expense of laudanum, when here is a
better paradise for nothing!

This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voy