by weapons which reduce the consciousness of life itself to the lowest degree. Wherever possible, no more wishes, no more wants; shun everything which produces emotion, which produces “blood” (eating no salt, the fakir hygiene); no love; no hate; equanimity; no revenge; no getting rich; no work; begging; as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman as possible; as far as the intellect is concerned, Pascal’s principle, “ il faut s’abêtir. ” To put the result in ethical and psychological language, “self-annihilation,” “sanctification”; to put it in physiological language, “hypnotism”⁠—the attempt to find some approximate human equivalent for what hibernation is for certain animals, for what aestivation is for many tropical plants, a minimum of assimilation and metabolism in which life just manages to subsist without really coming into the consciousness. An amazing amount of human energy has been devoted to this object⁠—perhaps uselessly? There cannot be the slightest doubt but that such sportsmen