DE QUINCEY VERSUS COLERIDGE.--STIMULATION AND COLLAPSE
CONSIDERED.--THE USE OF OPIUM ALWAYS TO BE CONDEMNED.--COLERIDGE
DEFENDED.--WRETCHED STATE OF THE OPIUM EATER.--AN EXPLANATORY REMARK.
De Quincey charges Coleridge with having written many of his best things
under the stimulus of opium. This may be so; he could not well write at
all without being in some way affected by opium, seeing that he took it
every day; but if this applied to the latter stage of opium eating (and I
have reason to think it did), the little pleasurable sensation and
stimulation he might well take advantage of, as at other times his
condition must have been such as to interfere greatly with his writing at
all to any purpose. But if this applied to the first stages, and he
continued on writing after the stimulation and pleasurable sensation had
subsided, his writings must have presented a very zigzag appearance;
passing suddenly from the height of pleasure to the depth of
misery--falling from the top round of stimulation and enjoyment to the
lowest depth of dejection and debility. For it was my invariable
experience during the first stages, that for every benefit received in
intellectual force from stimulation, I suffered a corresponding injury or
offset in the mental debility and prostration which ensued. The reaction
that always followed the long strain of stimulation upon the brain, found
me completely wilted and mentally exhausted. Up to the heights and down
into the depths was the routine. Glorying in the skies or sweltering in
the Styx. Like Sisyphus rolling his stone of punishment up the steep
mountain, with which he no sooner reaches the top than away it rebounds to
the bottom again, and so on eternally.
In the latter stages, an opium eater cannot be blamed for taking advantage
of the little pleasurable sensation which his nepenthe affords him. The
enjoyment he gets lasts but a moment, and would not equal the pleasure
derived by a healthy and sound man from the simple act of writing. And, as
far as power gained from stimulation is concerned, the reader must
remember that opium shatters, tears, and wears out the subject as it goes,
and that all the benefit he could derive from stimulation, after having
become an habituate, could not place his powers upon a level with what
they would have been naturally had he never touched opium.
De Quincey speaks of Coleridge as though the latter had denounced opium,
and not given it credit for benefits conferred, when the truth is it
confers no benefits. It gives, but it takes away, and the highest point
stimulation can reach will not elevate a man's abilities to the plane
from which they have fallen, in the latter and confirmed stages of the
habit. Therefore, a man can justly and always condemn the use of opium,
even while taking advantage of its best manifestations. It is he that is
the loser at all times, and not it. The case I wish to make out is just
this: When a man is once a confirmed opium eater, all the pleasure he can
derive from opium would not equal the enjoyment a well man receives from
the animal spirits alone; and all the intellectual force obtainable from
stimulation can never approach that which would have been his own freely
in a natural condition. Hence, to charge Coleridge with ingratitude to
opium--for that is about what it amounts to--is all bosh. It ruined him
for poetry, crippled him for everything, and made his life miserable. He
did the best he could under the circumstances,--to continue the argument.
Had he written at all times without regard to his condition, in the first
stages the ravages following stimulation would have so undone his mind,
that it would have fallen far short of its natural ability; and had he
written from stimulation clear through reaction, his compositions would
have been lop-sided things indeed. Or, had he in the advanced stages
abnegated the short and only period of intellectual complacency afforded
him by opium, and written only during the wretched condition which
generally subsists, his productions must of necessity have been more
gloomy, and less able than they are. He had to make the most of his
unfortunate situation, and seize his opportunities as they presented. It
was impossible to write at all times and in all conditions, and hence he
disappointed the expectations of many. Yes, and who blamed him for lacking
energy? Oh, ignorant men! When an opium eater, himself surrounded by the
same circumstances and in the same condition as Coleridge, contemplates
the results of his labors, they seem almost miraculous. And let me tell
you, dear reader, they are almost my only source of hope and consolation
in this my proscribed and benighted state. In life, but not living; a man,
but incapable of the happiness and pleasures of man. Nothing but darkness
and dejection is my lot. Cut off forever, irretrievably cut off, from
almost every social enjoyment. If I have a particle of enjoyment, it is
very faint and vague; dim as the filmy line that divides me from the world
and those in it, and all that enjoy this life. Wretched dejection and
despair are mine; my mind a "Stygian cave forlorn," which breeds "horrid
shapes and shrieks and sights unholy." But it seems the peculiar province
of those so happy as to escape this earthly damnation, to deride and blame
for want of energy and force the poor victim--perhaps to the crime of some
one else,--and nothing but black looks and condemnation from his
fellow-man does he receive; he, from whom even the face of his Maker
seems almost turned away, as he winds his weary pilgrimage through a chaos
of unutterable woe down to his soon-forgotten grave.
"Here lies one who prostituted every human gift to the use of opium," is
the verdict upon a life of more suffering and more effort, perhaps, than
appears in the life of one in ten thousand.
For, be it known, everything accomplished by an opium eater is done in the
sweat of blood, and with the load of Atlas weighing upon the spirit.
But the reader must pardon me. I seem to gravitate naturally towards the
results in the latter stages, to which a great part of that I have just
written must apply,--especially where I speak of one having a right to
denounce opium "always, even while taking advantage of its best
manifestations." Before opium has injured a man, and in the very
commencement of the habit, should he wilfully use the drug as a means of
giving him pleasure, and brilliancy to his mind, when the requirements of
the habit do not make the taking of the opium necessary, he is to blame;
but let him long continue in this practice, and he will find to his sorrow
that all the mental power the stimulation of opium can give him would not
equal that of his natural abilities, unincumbered by the habit.