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life empty and cracked, ever sounding flat and false. While in
others the Me is enclosed in a sealed straw-covered flask and can
only be awakened by either evaporation or decapitation, in other
words, by a spiritual revolution. And in the very few among mortals,
it emerges out of the iron calyx of a flower of red-hot steel, or
flows from the transparent, odoriferous bosom of a rose of light. In
the first we have a Caesar, an Alexander, a Napoleon; in the second,
a Buddha, a Socrates, a Christ.

"But consider that Science, in the course of psychological analysis,
speaks of Christ, Napoleon, and Shakespeare, as patients. Such exalted
states of the soul, such activity of the mind, such exuberance of
spiritual strength, are but the results of the transformation of the
Me in the subject, we are told, and this transformation has its roots
in the organism. But why, I ask, should there be such a gulf between
individuals, such a difference in their Mes, when a difference in the
organism is a trifle in comparison? How account for the ebb and flow
in the souls, or let us say, in the expression of the individualities,
of Mohammad the Prophet, for instance, and Mohammad the camel-herd?
And why is it in psychological states that are similar, the
consciousness of the one is like a mountain peak, so to speak, and
that of the other like a cave?

"A soldier is severely wounded in battle and a change takes place in
his nervous organism, by reason of which he loses his organic
consciousness; or, to speak in the phraseology of the psychologist, he
loses the sense of his own body, of his physical personality. The
cause of this change is probably the wound received; but the nature of
the change can be explained only by hypotheses, which are become
matters of choice and taste--and sometimes of personal interest among
scientists. Now, when the question is resolved by hypothesis, is not
even a layman free to offer one? If I say the Glass is shattered and
the Me within is sadly reflected, or in a more tragic instance the
light of the Me runs out, would I not be offering thee a solution as
dear and tenable as that of the professor of psychology?"

CHAPTER II

THE VOICE OF THE DAWN

Breathless but scathless, we emerge from the mazes of metaphysics and
psychology where man and the soul are ever playing hide-and-seek; and
where Khalid was pleased to display a little of his killing skill in
fencing. To those mazes, we promise the Read