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176 should have been discovered experimentally by the Japanese long before the thing was scientifically known to Europe. Not all subjects, however, make use of it. Some simply rest one end of the wand on the floor and then lean upon it; some do not even rest it on the floor, but hold it before them in the air. These various devices are matter of traditional practice with particular pilgrim clubs.

Easy as vacuity gets to be to those who can give their whole mind to it, the acquisition of such capacity is by no means an instantaneous affair, as the history of one earnest applicant for emptiness from his first failure to his first success will suffice to show.

After having duly reduced himself by protracted austerities to sufficient abstraction, he was set one evening in the nakaza's seat. Ranged round him sat the regular company incanting. He closed his eyes and the gohei-wand was put into his hands. From that moment he tried to make his mind as blank as possible. The result the first evening was simple nausea. It is not, perhaps, to be wondered at, that his first dose of divinity should disagree with a man.