What was true of Coleridge holds good with all subject to the habit, the effect of opium being the same on all. Opium strikes at the very root of energy, as though it would extirpate that quality altogether. A deadly languor, the opposite of energy, an averseness to activity, pervades the whole system with paralyzing effect. Of course this state of feeling is inimical to the accomplishment of any great ambition. The ambition remains as a quality of remorse, to "prick and sting" one, but the energy to fulfil is frustrated by the enervating spells of opium. That dread inertia known only to opium eaters prevents the doing of everything save that which must be done, that cannot be avoided. The "potent poison" was never designed for man's daily use. It is not a thing which the system counteracts by long usage; it is a thing that transforms and deforms the whole physical and mental economy, and the longer its use the more complete the destruction. A man is thrown flat, and instead of a predisposition or a passion to do anything which aids one in the accomplishment of purposes, the whole human nature revolts like a pressed convict; there is no pleasure in the doing or the prospect of doing anything whatever. No warmth or glow of passion or genial feeling can be aroused. Hence the poetical faculty was annihilated in Coleridge. There is a sort of vitrifying process that chills all sensibility. A man is a stick. To expect that a man could succeed as well under these conditions, even in the little accomplished, is unreasonable. There are no genial impulses, no strength of fervor, no warmth of feeling of any kind. The man is under a load of poison; the springs of action are clogged with crushing weight. No hope of pleasure in future prospect can excite action. Whatever is done, is done in pale, cold strength of intellect. A man is placed entirely out of sympathy with his fellows or human kind. He cannot judge from his own heart what they would like or prefer. He is as completely cut off and dissevered from the body of mankind, and the interests and feelings of the same, as if he were a visitant from another sphere, and but faintly manifested here. How can he write in this condition? That exquisite feeling that teaches a writer to know when the best word tips the edges of the sensibility, lies buried under the _débris_ of dead tissue. It is a "lost art" to him. Although a man longs to do something worthy the praise of men, and although his ambition may be even higher than it otherwise would be, owing to his being able to take no pleasure in minutiæ, and having appreciation only for concrete generalities, he has such a contempt for, and so little pleasure in, the procuring processes, the details of the work, that he is overwhelmed with disgust before making an effort.