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Enough, however the world grew older, and the dream vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still rub them today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost old Kant. But, is that an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.
Mihi a docto doctore, Demandatur causam et rationem quare Opium facit dormire. A quoi respondeo, Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva, Cujus est natura Sensus assoupire. The words Nature and Essence are grand instruments of this mode of begging the question, as in the well-known argument of the scholastic theologians, that the mind thinks always, because the essence of the mind is to think.
People suppose a family to be royal because it reigns; on the contrary, it reigns because it is royal, because it has more life, plus d'esprit royal surely as mysterious and occult a force as the virtus dormitiva of opium. The common life of man is about thirty years; the average duration of the reigns of European sovereigns, being Christian, is at the very lowest calculation twenty.
This was the sole astronomy of the Chinese and Chaldeans; but to it the vigorous Greek mind added a highly complex geometrical plan of their movements, for which Copernicus substituted a more harmonious system, without as yet any idea of a compelling cause. The planets revolved in circles because it was their nature to do so, just as laudanum sets to sleep because it possesses a virtus dormitiva.