11 March 1889 – 17 March 1889

This book has not been opened since February 3. I have no wish to keep the diary of an invalid. I am sometimes better, often worse ; on the whole going down-hill in strength, and with fresh troubles coming on top of the others. Every day is a weary trial, and every night a worse one. I had a very curious dream whose floating imagery evades every cast of the net of language. I thought I found myself somehow, by merely looking aside, aware of some of the main secrets of Nature's material work- shop. There was no tinge of atheistic feeling. Merely, I saw a little below the superficial appearance of things, and found the methods by which forms are innumerably varied and sent on their courses to be so simple and obvious that I smiled at myself with a sort of impatience at not having seen all this before. A pleasurable satisfaction remained after I had awaked and said to myself ' This is the haschisch.'