• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1853 0

—the ideas of time and space,——or how we came by those ideas,——or of what stuff they were made,—or whether they were born with us,——or we pick’d them up afterwards as we went along,—or whether we did it in frocks,—or not till we had got into breeches,—with a thousand other inquiries and disputes about INFINITY, PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY, NECESSITY, and so forth, upon whose desperate and unconquerable theories, so many fine heads have been turned and crack’d,—never did my uncle Toby’s the least injury at all; my father knew it,—and was no less surprised, than he was disappointed with my uncle’s fortuitous solution.

Do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my father.

Not I, quoth my uncle.

——But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about.——

No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby.

Gracious heaven! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two hands together,——there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother Toby,—’twere almost a pity to exchange it for a knowledge.———But I’ll tell thee.——

To understand what time is aright, without which we never can comprehend infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the other,——we ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is, we have of duration, so as to give a satisfactory account, how we came by it.—What is that to any body? quoth my uncle Toby.* For if you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind, continued my father, and observe attentively, you will perceive, brother, that whilst you and I are talking together, and thinking and smoaking our pipes: or whilst we receive successively ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing else commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing co existing with our thinking,3——and so according to that preconceived——You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle Toby.—

——’tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our computations of time, we are so used to minutes, hours, weeks, and months,——and of clocks (I wish there was not a clock in the kingdom) to measure out their several portions to us, and to those who belong to us,——that ’twill be well, if in time to come, the succession of our ideas be of any use or service to us4 at all.

Now, whether we observe it or no, continued my father, in every sound man’s head, there is a regular succession of ideas of one sort or other, which follow each other in train just like5——A train of artillery? said my uncle Toby.—A train of a fiddle stick!—quoth my father,—which follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle.6—I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, mine are more like a smoak-jack.7——Then, brother Toby, I have nothing more to say to you upon the subject, said my father.

*Vid. Locke.

CHAP. XIX

——What a conjuncture was here lost!——My father in one of his best explanatory moods,—in eager pursuit of a metaphysic point into the very regions where clouds and thick darkness would soon have encompassed it about;——my uncle Toby in one of the finest dispositions for it in the world;—his head like a smoak-jack;——the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with fuliginous matter!——By the tomb stone of Lucian——if it is in being,——if not, why then, by his ashes! by the ashes of my dear Rabelais, and dearer Cervantes,1——my father and my uncle Toby’s discourse upon TIME and ETERNITY,—was a discourse devoutly to be wished for!2 and the petulancy of my father’s humour in putting a stop to it, as he did, was a robbery of the Ontologic3 treasury, of such a jewel, as no coalition of great occasions and great men, are ever likely to restore to it again.

CHAP. XX

Tho’ my father persisted in not going on with the discourse,—yet he could not get my uncle Toby’s smoak-jack out of his head,—piqued as he was at first with it;——there was something in the comparison