adept, it was alleged, could transfer the sense of consciousness from his
brain to the foot or hand, he could annihilate the world around him and
pass into another sphere. Lucian wondered whether he could not perform
some such operation for his own benefit. Human beings were constantly
annoying him and getting in his way, was it not possible to annihilate
the race, or at all events to reduce them to wholly insignificant forms?
A certain process suggested itself to his mind, a work partly mental and
partly physical, and after two or three experiments he found to his
astonishment and delight that it was successful. Here, he thought, he had
discovered one of the secrets of true magic; this was the key to the
symbolic transmutations of the Eastern tales. The adept could, in truth,
change those who were obnoxious to him into harmless and unimportant
shapes, not as in the letter of the old stories, by transforming the
enemy, but by transforming himself. The magician puts men below him by
going up higher, as one looks down on a mountain city from a loftier
crag. The stones on the road and such petty obstacles do not trouble the
wise man on the great journey, and so Lucian, when obliged to stop and
converse with his fellow-creatures, to listen to their poor pretences and
inanities, was no more inconvenienced than when he had to climb an
awkward stile in the course of a walk. As for the more unpleasant
manifestations of humanity; after all they no longer concerned him. Men
intent on the great purpose did not suffer the current of their thoughts
to be broken by the buzzing of a fly caught in a spider's web, so why
should he be perturbed by the misery of a puppy in the hands of village
boys? The fly, no doubt, endured its tortures; lying helpless and bound
in those slimy bands, it cried out in its thin voice when the claws of
the horrible monster fastened on it; but its dying agonies had never
vexed the reverie of a lover. Lucian saw no reason why the boys should
offend him more than the spider, or why he should pity the dog more than
he pitied the fly. The talk of the men and women might be wearisome and