upon its own centre. I, at least, upon seeing those awful gates closed and
hung with draperies of woe, as for a death already past, spoke not, nor
started, nor groaned. One profound sigh ascended from my heart, and I was
silent for days.

It is the record of this third, or final stage of opium, as one differing
in something more than degree from the others, that I am now undertaking.
But a scruple arises as to the true interpretation of these final
symptoms. I have elsewhere explained, that it was no particular purpose of
mine, and _why_ it was no particular purpose, to warn other opium-eaters.
Still, as some few persons may use the record in that way, it becomes a
matter of interest to ascertain how far it is likely, that, even with the
same excesses, other opium-eaters could fall into the same condition. I do
not mean to lay a stress upon any supposed idiosyncrasy in myself.
Possibly every man has an idiosyncrasy. In some things, undoubtedly, he
has. For no man ever yet resembled another man so far, as not to differ
from him in features innumerable of his inner nature. But what I point to
are not peculiarities of temperament or of organization, so much as
peculiar circumstances and incidents through which my own separate
experience had revolved. Some of these were of a nature to alter the whole
economy of my mind. Great convulsions, from whatever cause, from
conscience, from fear, from grief, from struggles of the will, sometimes,
in passing away themselves, do not carry off the changes which they have
worked. _All_ the agitations of this magnitude which a man may have
threaded in his life, he neither ought to report, nor _could_ report. But
one which affected my childhood is a privileged exception. It is
privileged as a proper communication for a stranger's ear; because, though
relating to a man's proper self, it is a self so far removed from his
present self as to wound no feelings of delicacy or just reserve. It is
privileged also as a proper subject for the sympathy of the narrator. An
adult sympathizes with himself in childhood because he _is_ the same, and
because (being the same) yet he is _not_ the same. He acknowledges the
deep, mysterious identity between himself, as adult and as infant, for the
ground of his sympathy; and yet, with this general agreement, and
necessity of agreement, he feels the differences between his two selves as
the main quickeners of his sympathy. He pities the infirmities, as they
ar