The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [96]
of being, such as angels and spirits--'tis all done, may it please your worships, as they tell me, by Intuition;--and beings inferior, as your worships all know--syllogize by their noses: though there is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at its ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, are so wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the same fashion, and oft-times to make very well out too:--but that's neither here nor there--
The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or--the great and principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third (called the medius terminus); just as a man, as Locke well observes, by a yard, finds two mens nine-pin-alleys to be of the same length, which could not be brought together, to measure their equality, by juxta-position.
Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle Toby's deportment--what great attention he gave to every word--and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of it--surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his thumb--then fore- right--then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and fore-shortenings--he would have concluded my uncle Toby had got hold of the medius terminus, and was syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in order, as my father laid them before him. This, by-the-bye, was more than my father wanted--his aim in all the pains he was at in these philosophick lectures--was to enable my uncle Toby not to discuss--but comprehend--to hold the grains and scruples of learning-- not to weigh them.--My uncle Toby, as you will read in the next chapter, did neither the one or the other.
Chapter 2.XXXIV.
'Tis a pity, cried my father one winter's night, after a three hours painful translation of Slawkenbergius--'tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mother's threadpaper into the book for a mark, as he spoke--that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.--
Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle Toby's fancy, during the time of my father's explanation of Prignitz to him--having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green;--his body might as well have taken a turn there too--so that with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the medius terminus--my uncle Toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, as if my father had been translating Hafen Slawkenbergius from the Latin tongue into the Cherokee. But the word siege, like a talismanic power, in my father's metaphor, wafting back my uncle Toby's fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch--he open'd his ears--and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit--my father with great pleasure began his sentence again--changing only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father apprehended from it.
'Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother Toby--considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in their solutions of noses.--Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle Toby.
--My father thrust back his chair--rose up--put on his hat--took four long strides to the door--jerked it open--thrust his head half way out--shut the door again--took no notice of the bad hinge--returned to the table--pluck'd my mother's thread-paper out of Slawkenbergius's book--went hastily to his bureau--walked slowly back--twisted my mother's thread-paper about his thumb--unbutton'd his waistcoat--threw my mother's thread-paper into the fire--bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill'd his
The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or--the great and principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third (called the medius terminus); just as a man, as Locke well observes, by a yard, finds two mens nine-pin-alleys to be of the same length, which could not be brought together, to measure their equality, by juxta-position.
Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle Toby's deportment--what great attention he gave to every word--and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of it--surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his thumb--then fore- right--then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and fore-shortenings--he would have concluded my uncle Toby had got hold of the medius terminus, and was syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in order, as my father laid them before him. This, by-the-bye, was more than my father wanted--his aim in all the pains he was at in these philosophick lectures--was to enable my uncle Toby not to discuss--but comprehend--to hold the grains and scruples of learning-- not to weigh them.--My uncle Toby, as you will read in the next chapter, did neither the one or the other.
Chapter 2.XXXIV.
'Tis a pity, cried my father one winter's night, after a three hours painful translation of Slawkenbergius--'tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mother's threadpaper into the book for a mark, as he spoke--that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.--
Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle Toby's fancy, during the time of my father's explanation of Prignitz to him--having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green;--his body might as well have taken a turn there too--so that with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the medius terminus--my uncle Toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, as if my father had been translating Hafen Slawkenbergius from the Latin tongue into the Cherokee. But the word siege, like a talismanic power, in my father's metaphor, wafting back my uncle Toby's fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch--he open'd his ears--and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit--my father with great pleasure began his sentence again--changing only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father apprehended from it.
'Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother Toby--considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in their solutions of noses.--Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle Toby.
--My father thrust back his chair--rose up--put on his hat--took four long strides to the door--jerked it open--thrust his head half way out--shut the door again--took no notice of the bad hinge--returned to the table--pluck'd my mother's thread-paper out of Slawkenbergius's book--went hastily to his bureau--walked slowly back--twisted my mother's thread-paper about his thumb--unbutton'd his waistcoat--threw my mother's thread-paper into the fire--bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill'd his