Huxley experimented with mescaline because he wished to learn something about his mind and its relation to reality. No doubt what he learned was influenced by his mind’s own predilections and prior concepts, as much as he claimed he wished to escape them by accessing something nearer to “direct perception” of reality. (If there is a villain in The Doors of Perception, it is the constraining power of words and concepts—ironic, perhaps, for a writer, or perhaps not, since writers are acutely aware of the limitations and betrayals of their principal tool.)
