When a proposition can be taken in two senses—’tis a law in disputation, That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him.——This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle Toby’s side.——“Good God!” cried my uncle Toby, “are children brought into the world with a squirt?”
CHAPTER XVI
—Upon my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of skin quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle Toby—and you have crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly. ’Tis your own fault, said Dr. Slop——you should have clinch’d your two fists together into the form of a child’s head as I told you, and sat firm. I did so, answered my uncle Toby.——Then the points of my forceps have not been sufficiently arm’d, or the rivet wants closing—or else the cut in my thumb has made me a little aukward—or possibly—’Tis well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities—that the experiment was not first made upon my child’s head-piece.———It would not have been a cherry-stone the worse, answered Dr. Slop.—I maintain it, said my uncle Toby, it would have broke the cerebellum (unless indeed the skull had been as hard as a granado) and turn’d it all into a perfect posset.———Pshaw! replied Dr. Slop, a child’s head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple;—the sutures give way—and besides, I could have extracted by the feet after.—Not you, said 135 she.——I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father.
Pray do, added my uncle Toby.
CHAPTER XVII
——And pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head?———’Tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. Slop (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are—’tis a point very difficult to know—and yet of the greatest consequence to be known;——because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head—there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * *
——What the possibility was, Dr. Slop whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle Toby.——There is no such danger, continued he, with the head.—No, in truth, quoth my father—but when your possibility has taken place at the hip—you may as well take off the head too.
——It is morally impossible the reader should understand this——’tis enough Dr. Slop understood it;——so taking the green bays bag in his hand, with the help of Obadiah’s pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door———and from the door was shewn the way, by the good old midwife, to my mother’s apartments.
CHAPTER XVIII
It is two hours, and ten minutes—and no more—cried my father, looking at his watch, since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived—and I know not how it happens, brother Toby—but to my imagination it seems almost an age.
——Here—pray, Sir, take hold of my cap—nay, take the bell along with it, and my pantoufles too.
Now, Sir, they are all at your service; and I freely make you a present of ’em, on condition you give me all your attention to this chapter.
Though my father said, “he knew not how it happen’d,”—yet he knew very well how it happen’d;——and at the instant he spoke it, was pre-determined in his mind to give my uncle Toby a clear account of the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of duration and its simple modes, in order to 136 shew my uncle Toby by what mechanism and mensurations in the brain it came to pass, that the rapid succession of their ideas, and the eternal scampering of the discourse from one thing to another, since Dr. Slop had come into the room, had lengthened out so short a period to so inconceivable an extent.——“I know not how it happens—cried my father,—but it seems an age.”
——’Tis owing entirely, quoth my uncle Toby, to the succession of our ideas.
My father, who had an itch, in common with all philosophers, of reasoning upon everything which happened, and accounting for it too—proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this, of the succession of ideas, and had not the least apprehension of having it snatch’d out of his hands by my uncle Toby, who (honest man!) generally took everything as it happened;——and who, of all things in the world, troubled his brain the least with abstruse thinking;—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 picked 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 cracked——never did my uncle Toby’s the least injury at all; my father knew it—and was no less surprized 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 anybody? quoth my uncle Toby. 3For if you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind, continued my father, and observe attentively, you will perceive, 137 brother, that whilst you and I are talking together, and thinking, and smoking 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 anything 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——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 us at all.