The
pleasure given by wine is always mounting and tending to a crisis, after
which it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary
for eight or ten hours: the first, to borrow a technical distinction from
medicine, is a case of acute--the second, the chronic pleasure; the one
is a flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main
distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental
faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner),
introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and
harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession; opium greatly
invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgement, and gives a
preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the
admirations, the loves and the hatreds of the drinker; opium, on the
contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties,
active or passive, and with respect to the temper and moral feelings in
general it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by
the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily
constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for instance,
opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent
affections; but then, with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden
development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation there is
always more or less of a maudlin character, which exposes it to the
contempt of the bystander.
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