“‘Then I felt that I was formed of granite, and immovable. Suddenly a change came again over me, and I found that I consisted of delicate and fragile basket-work. Then I became a danseuse, delighting an audience and myself by movements which seemed barely to touch the earth. Presently beautiful sights came before me, treasures from the depth of the sea, gems of the brightest hues, gorgeous shells, coral of the richest colors, sparkling with drops of water, and hung with lovely seaweed. My eager glances could not take in half the beautiful objects that passed before me during the incessant changes the visions underwent. Now I was gazing upon antique brooches and rings from buried cities; now upon a series of Egyptian vases; now upon sculptured wood-work blackened by time; and lastly I was buried amid forests of tall trees, such as I had read of but never seen. “‘The sights that pleased me most I had power to a certain extent to prolong, and those that displeased me I could occasionally set aside, and I awoke myself to full consciousness once or twice while under the influence of the morphia by an angry exclamation that I would not have it. I did not once lose my personal identity.’ “The lady almost invariably suffers more or less from hallucinations of the foregoing character, if it becomes necessary to administer to her an opiate: and on analyzing her visions, she can generally refer the principal portions of them, notwithstanding their confusion and distortion, to works that she has recently read.” Opium, in certain doses, increases the amount of blood in the brain, and this induces a condition very different from that of sleep. In this fact we have an explanation of the activity of the imagination as one of its prominent effects. That Coleridge should have composed the Kubla Khan under its influence is in nowise remarkable. It is probable, however, that the full influence of his mind was exerted upon it after he awoke to consciousness, and that the wild fancies excited by the opiate, and based upon what he had been previously reading, formed the substratum of his conceptions. In any event, the ideas contained in this fragment are no more fanciful than those which occurred to De Quincey and the lady whose case has just been recorded, nor are they more impressively related. The imagination may therefore be active during sleep, but we have no authentic instance on record that it has, unaided by causes which exercise a powerful influence over the intracranial circulation, led to the production of any ideas which could not be excelled by the individual when awake. Perhaps the most striking case in opposition to this opinion is one detailed by Abercrombie,[39] who says: