There are, in fact, two classes of temperaments as
to this terrific drug—those which are,
and those which are not, preconformed to its power;
those which genially expand to its temptations, and
those which frostily exclude them. Not in the
energies of the will, but in the qualities of the
nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration of—Fall
or stand: doomed thou art to yield; or, strengthened
constitutionally, to resist. Most of those who
have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in
opium, have practically none at all. For the initial
fascination is for them effectually defeated
by the sickness which nature has associated with the
first stages of opium-eating. But to that other
class, whose nervous sensibilities vibrate to their
profoundest depths under the first touch of the angelic
poison, even as a lover’s ear thrills on hearing
unexpectedly the voice of her whom he loves, opium
is the Amreeta cup of beatitude. You know the
Paradise Lost? and you remember, from the eleventh
book, in its earlier part, that laudanum already existed
in Eden—nay, that it was used medicinally
by an archangel; for, after Michael had ‘purged
with euphrasy and rue’ the eyes of Adam, lest
he should be unequal to the mere sight of the
great visions about to unfold their draperies before
him, next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against
the affliction of these visions, of which visions
the first was death. And how?
‘He from the well of life three
drops instill’d.’
What was their operation?
’So deep the power of these ingredients
pierced, Even to the inmost seat of mental sight,
That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes, Sank
down, and all his spirits became entranced. But
him the gentle angel by the hand Soon raised’——
The second of these lines it is which betrays the
presence of laudanum. It is in the faculty of
mental vision, it is in the increased power of dealing
with the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic
virtue of opium lies. Now, in the original higher
sensibility is found some palliation for the practice
of opium-eating; in the greater temptation is a greater
excuse. And in this faculty of self-revelation
is found some palliation for reporting the case
to the world, which both Coleridge and his biographer
have overlooked.
The most remarkable instance of a combined movement
in society, which history, perhaps, will be summoned
to notice, is that which, in our own days, has applied
itself to the abatement of intemperance. Naturally,
or by any direct process, the machinery set
in motion would seem irrelevant to the object:
if one hundred men unite to elevate the standard of
temperance, they can do this with effect only by improvements
in their own separate cases: each individual,
for such an effort of self-conquest, can draw upon
