f not true
in that rigour of expression, to this formula undoubtedly it is that the
wise rule of life must approximate.

Among the powers in man which suffer by this too intense life of the
_social_ instincts, none suffers more than the power of dreaming. Let no
man think this a trifle. The machinery for dreaming planted in the human
brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance with the
mystery of darkness, is the one great tube through which man communicates
with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connexion with the heart, the
eye, and the ear, compose the magnificent apparatus which forces the
infinite into the chambers of a human brain, and throws dark reflections
from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleeping mind.

But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude, which is becoming
a visionary idea in England, on the other hand, it is certain that some
merely physical agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming almost
preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exercise; to some extent at
least, and for some persons: but beyond all others is opium, which indeed
seems to possess a _specific_ power in that direction; not merely for
exalting the colours of dream-scenery, but for deepening its shadows; and,
above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful _realities_.

The _Opium Confessions_ were written with some slight secondary purpose of
exposing this specific power of opium upon the faculty of dreaming, but
much more with the purpose of displaying the faculty itself; and the
outline of the work travelled in this course. Supposing a reader
acquainted with the true object of the Confessions as here stated, viz.
the revelation of dreaming, to have put this question:--

"But how came you to dream more splendidly than others?"

The answer would have been:--"Because (_praemissis praemittendis_) I took
excessive quantities of opium."

Secondly, suppose him to say, "But how came you to take opium in this
excess?"

The answer to _that_ would be, "Because some early events in my life had
left a weakness in one organ which required (or seemed to require) that
stimulant."

Then, because the opium dreams could not always have been understood
without a knowledge of these events, it became necessary to relate them.
Now, these two questions and answers exhibit the _law_ of the work, _i.e._
the principle which determined its form, but precisely in the inverse or
regre