No one should be surprised that Western philosophy began in symposia, drinking parties, nor that the philosophy with such roots has always had as its central assumption the existence of an objective universe to which individual speculations must conform. The whole West, divided on everything else, unites to shout the great axiom, that thinking does not make it so. This is not an axiom congenial to marijuana. The pot-smoker re ceives his "insights" by peering into himself, not by fixing his attention on the world, and he regards his inspirations as private truths. He rejects any notion of objective verification. Generously, he will allow other persons to have other truths, all these private revelations being not so much contradictory as incommensurable. No wonder there is such hot warfare between the followers of Bacchus and the worshippers of the hempen gods of the East. The subject of their quarrel is only the universe.