At the commencement of the intoxication produced by the hemp, there is the most perfect consciousness of the state of the disordered faculties. There exists the power of analyzing the sensations, but the mind seems unwilling to resume its guiding and controlling power. It is conscious that all is but a dream, and yet feels a delight in perfect abandonment to the false enjoyment. It will not attempt to awaken from the reverie, but rather to indulge in it, to the utmost extent of which it is capable. There seems an ideal existence, but it is too pleasurable to shake off—it penetrates into the inmost recesses of the body—it envelopes it. The dreams and phantoms of the imagination appear part of the living being; and yet, during all this, there remains the internal conviction that the real world is abandoned, for a fictitious and imaginative existence, which has charms too delightful to resist. To the extreme rapidity with which ideas, sensations, desires, rush across the brain, may be attributed the singular retardation of time, which appears to be lengthened out to eternity. Similar effects, proceeding, doubtless, from the same or similar causes, are noticed in the “Confessions of an Opium-Eater,” wherein he speaks of minutes becoming as ages. Dr. Moreau gives singular illustrations of this peculiar state. On one occasion he took a dose of the haschisch previously to his going to the opera, and he fancied that he was upwards of three hours finding his way through the passage leading to it. M. de Saulcy partook of a dose of haschisch, and when he recovered, it appeared to him that he had been under its influence for a hundred years at least.