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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Section 14 of 48 - Table of Contents
Chapter 2.VI.

--Bless my soul!--my poor mistress is ready to faint--and her pains are
gone--and the drops are done--and the bottle of julap is broke--and the
nurse has cut her arm--(and I, my thumb, cried Dr. Slop,) and the child is
where it was, continued Susannah,--and the midwife has fallen backwards
upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black as your hat.--
I'll look at it, quoth Dr Slop.--There is no need of that, replied
Susannah,--you had better look at my mistress--but the midwife would gladly
first give you an account how things are, so desires you would go up stairs
and speak to her this moment.

Human nature is the same in all professions.

The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop's head--He had not
digested it.--No, replied Dr. Slop, 'twould be full as proper if the
midwife came down to me.--I like subordination, quoth my uncle Toby,--and
but for it, after the reduction of Lisle, I know not what might have become
of the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for bread, in the year Ten.--Nor,
replied Dr. Slop, (parodying my uncle Toby's hobby-horsical reflection;
though full as hobby-horsical himself)--do I know, Captain Shandy, what
might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and confusion
I find all things are in at present, but for the subordination of fingers
and thumbs to. . .--the application of which, Sir, under this accident of
mine, comes in so a propos, that without it, the cut upon my thumb might
have been felt by the Shandy family, as long as the Shandy family had a
name.



Chapter 2.VII.

Let us go back to the. . .--in the last chapter.

It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence
flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear
mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about
you in petto, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it.  A scar, an
axe, a sword, a pink'd doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-
ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot--but above all, a tender
infant royally accoutred.--Tho' if it was too young, and the oration as
long as Tully's second Philippick--it must certainly have beshit the
orator's mantle.--And then again, if too old,--it must have been unwieldly
and incommodious to his action--so as to make him lose by his child almost
as much as he could gain by it.--Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the
precise age to a minute--hid his Bambino in his mantle so cunningly that no
mortal could smell it--and produced it so critically, that no soul could
say, it came in by head and shoulders--Oh Sirs! it has done wonders--It has
open'd the sluices, and turn'd the brains, and shook the principles, and
unhinged the politicks of half a nation.

These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I
say, where orators wore mantles--and pretty large ones too, my brethren,
with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple, superfine,
marketable cloth in them--with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a
great style of design.--All which plainly shews, may it please your
worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does
at present, both within and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the
world, but short coats, and the disuse of trunk-hose.--We can conceal
nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing.



Chapter 2.VIII.

Dr. Slop was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation:
for happening to have his green baize bag upon his knees, when he began to
parody my uncle Toby--'twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him:
for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new-
invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them
ready to clap in, when your reverences took so much notice of the. . .,
which had he managed--my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown:  the
sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so
like the two lines which form the salient angle of a ravelin,--Dr. Slop
would never have given them up;--and my uncle Toby would as soon have
thought of flying, as taking them by force:  but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely
in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times
worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his
forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it.

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 2.IX.

--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 on 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 she.--I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father.

Pray do, added my uncle Toby.



Chapter 2.X.

--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 baize 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 2.XI.

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 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 every thing 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 every thing 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 any body? quoth my
uncle Toby.  (Vide Locke.)  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
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 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--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.

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 like--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.--I declare,
quoth my uncle Toby, mine are more like a smoke-jack,--Then, brother Toby,
I have nothing more to say to you upon that subject, said my father.



Chapter 2.XII.

--What a conjuncture was here lost!--My father in one of his best
explanatory moods--in eager pursuit of a metaphysical 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 smoke-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!--my father and my uncle Toby's discourse upon Time and Eternity-
-was a discourse devoutly to be wished for! and the petulancy of my
father's humour, in putting a stop to it as he did, was a robbery of the
Ontologic Treasury of such a jewel, as no coalition of great occasions and
great men are ever likely to restore to it again.



Chapter 2.XIII.

Tho' my father persisted in not going on with the discourse--yet he could
not get my uncle Toby's smoke-jack out of his head--piqued as he was at
first with it;--there was something in the comparison at the bottom, which
hit his fancy; for which purpose, resting his elbow upon the table, and
reclining the right side of his head upon the palm of his hand--but looking
first stedfastly in the fire--he began to commune with himself, and
philosophize about it:  but his spirits being wore out with the fatigues of
investigating new tracts, and the constant exertion of his faculties upon
that variety of subjects which had taken their turn in the discourse--the
idea of the smoke jack soon turned all his ideas upside down--so that he
fell asleep almost before he knew what he was about.

As for my uncle Toby, his smoke-jack had not made a dozen revolutions,
before he fell asleep also.--Peace be with them both!--Dr. Slop is engaged
with the midwife and my mother above stairs.--Trim is busy in turning an
old pair of jack-boots into a couple of mortars, to be employed in the
siege of Messina next summer--and is this instant boring the touch-holes
with the point of a hot poker.--All my heroes are off my hands;--'tis the
first time I have had a moment to spare--and I'll make use of it, and write
my preface.



The Author's Preface

No, I'll not say a word about it--here it is;--in publishing it--I have
appealed to the world--and to the world I leave it;--it must speak for
itself.

All I know of the matter is--when I sat down, my intent was to write a good
book; and as far as the tenuity of my understanding would hold out--a wise,
aye, and a discreet--taking care only, as I went along, to put into it all
the wit and the judgment (be it more or less) which the great Author and
Bestower of them had thought fit originally to give me--so that, as your
worships see--'tis just as God pleases.

Now, Agalastes (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth, That there may be some wit
in it, for aught he knows--but no judgment at all.  And Triptolemus and
Phutatorius agreeing thereto, ask, How is it possible there should? for
that wit and judgment in this world never go together; inasmuch as they are
two operations differing from each other as wide as east from west--So,
says Locke--so are farting and hickuping, say I.  But in answer to this,
Didius the great church lawyer, in his code de fartendi et illustrandi
fallaciis, doth maintain and make fully appear, That an illustration is no
argument--nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean to be a
syllogism;--but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for
it--so that the main good these things do is only to clarify the
understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself, in order
to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which, if
left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil all.

Now, my dear anti-Shandeans, and thrice able criticks, and fellow-labourers
(for to you I write this Preface)--and to you, most subtle statesmen and
discreet doctors (do--pull off your beards) renowned for gravity and
wisdom;--Monopolus, my politician--Didius, my counsel; Kysarcius, my
friend;--Phutatorius, my guide;--Gastripheres, the preserver of my life;
Somnolentius, the balm and repose of it--not forgetting all others, as well
sleeping as waking, ecclesiastical as civil, whom for brevity, but out of
no resentment to you, I lump all together.--Believe me, right worthy,

My most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf, and in my own too,
in case the thing is not done already for us--is, that the great gifts and
endowments both of wit and judgment, with every thing which usually goes
along with them--such as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence, quick parts, and
what not, may this precious moment, without stint or measure, let or
hindrance, be poured down warm as each of us could bear it--scum and
sediment and all (for I would not have a drop lost) into the several
receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and
spare places of our brains--in such sort, that they might continue to be
injected and tunn'd into, according to the true intent and meaning of my
wish, until every vessel of them, both great and small, be so replenish'd,
saturated, and filled up therewith, that no more, would it save a man's
life, could possibly be got either in or out.

Bless us!--what noble work we should make!--how should I tickle it off!--
and what spirits should I find myself in, to be writing away for such
readers!--and you--just heaven!--with what raptures would you sit and read-
-but oh!--'tis too much--I am sick--I faint away deliciously at the
thoughts of it--'tis more than nature can bear!--lay hold of me--I am
giddy--I am stone blind--I'm dying--I am gone.--Help!  Help!  Help!--But
hold--I grow something better again, for I am beginning to foresee, when
this is over, that as we shall all of us continue to be great wits--we
should never agree amongst ourselves, one day to an end:--there would be so
much satire and sarcasm--scoffing and flouting, with raillying and
reparteeing of it--thrusting and parrying in one corner or another--there
would be nothing but mischief among us--Chaste stars! what biting and
scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should make, what with
breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and hitting of sore places--there
would be no such thing as living for us.

But then again, as we should all of us be men of great judgment, we should
make up matters as fast as ever they went wrong; and though we should
abominate each other ten times worse than so many devils or devilesses, we
should nevertheless, my dear creatures, be all courtesy and kindness, milk
and honey--'twould be a second land of promise--a paradise upon earth, if
there was such a thing to be had--so that upon the whole we should have
done well enough.

All I fret and fume at, and what most distresses my invention at present,
is how to bring the point itself to bear; for as your worships well know,
that of these heavenly emanations of wit and judgment, which I have so
bountifully wished both for your worships and myself--there is but a
certain quantum stored up for us all, for the use and behoof of the whole
race of mankind; and such small modicums of 'em are only sent forth into
this wide world, circulating here and there in one bye corner or another--
and in such narrow streams, and at such prodigious intervals from each
other, that one would wonder how it holds out, or could be sufficient for
the wants and emergencies of so many great estates, and populous empires.

Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North
Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracks of the globe, which lie
more directly under the arctick and antartick circles, where the whole
province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together within
the narrow compass of his cave--where the spirits are compressed almost to
nothing--and where the passions of a man, with every thing which belongs to
them, are as frigid as the zone itself--there the least quantity of
judgment imaginable does the business--and of wit--there is a total and an
absolute saving--for as not one spark is wanted--so not one spark is given.
Angels and ministers of grace defend us! what a dismal thing would it have
been to have governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty,
or run a match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a provincial
chapter there, with so plentiful a lack of wit and judgment about us!  For
mercy's sake, let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as we
can southwards into Norway--crossing over Swedeland, if you please, through
the small triangular province of Angermania to the lake of Bothmia;
coasting along it through east and west Bothnia, down to Carelia, and so
on, through all those states and provinces which border upon the far side
of the Gulf of Finland, and the north-east of the Baltick, up to
Petersbourg, and just stepping into Ingria;--then stretching over directly
from thence through the north parts of the Russian empire--leaving Siberia
a little upon the left hand, till we got into the very heart of Russian and
Asiatick Tartary.

Now through this long tour which I have led you, you observe the good
people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have
just left:--for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very
attentively, you may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of wit,
with a comfortable provision of good plain houshold judgment, which, taking
the quality and quantity of it together, they make a very good shift with--
and had they more of either the one or the other, it would destroy the
proper balance betwixt them, and I am satisfied moreover they would want
occasions to put them to use.

Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant
island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood and humours runs
high--where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and
other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason--the
height of our wit, and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly
proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities--and accordingly
we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and
creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain.

It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and
cold--wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and
settled way;--so that sometimes for near half a century together, there
shall be very little wit or judgment either to be seen or heard of amongst
us:--the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up--then all of a
sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like
fury--you would think they would never stop:--and then it is, that in
writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive all the
world before us.

It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that kind
of argumentative process, which Suidas calls dialectick induction--that I
draw and set up this position as most true and veritable;

That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered
from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom which
dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will just serve to
light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so that your reverences
and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer in my power to conceal
it from you, That the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was
no more than the first insinuating How d'ye of a caressing prefacer,
stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into
silence.  For alas! could this effusion of light have been as easily
procured, as the exordium wished it--I tremble to think how many thousands
for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must
have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives--
running their heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without
ever getting to their journies end;--some falling with their noses
perpendicularly into sinks--others horizontally with their tails into
kennels.  Here one half of a learned profession tilting full but against
the other half of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in
the dirt like hogs.--Here the brethren of another profession, who should
have run in opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock
of wild geese, all in a row the same way.--What confusion!--what mistakes!-
-fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and ears--admirable!--trusting
to the passions excited--in an air sung, or a story painted to the heart--
instead of measuring them by a quadrant.

In the fore-ground of this picture, a statesman turning the political
wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round--against the stream of corruption-
-by Heaven!--instead of with it.

In this corner, a son of the divine Esculapius, writing a book against
predestination; perhaps worse--feeling his patient's pulse, instead of his
apothecary's--a brother of the Faculty in the back-ground upon his knees in
tears--drawing the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his forgiveness;--
offering a fee--instead of taking one.

In that spacious Hall, a coalition of the gown, from all the bars of it,
driving a damn'd, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all their might
and main, the wrong way!--kicking it out of the great doors, instead of,
in--and with such fury in their looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in
their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been originally made for the
peace and preservation of mankind:--perhaps a more enormous mistake
committed by them still--a litigated point fairly hung up;--for instance,
Whether John o'Nokes his nose could stand in Tom o'Stiles his face, without
a trespass, or not--rashly determined by them in five-and-twenty minutes,
which, with the cautious pros and cons required in so intricate a
proceeding, might have taken up as many months--and if carried on upon a
military plan, as your honours know an Action should be, with all the
stratagems practicable therein,--such as feints,--forced marches,--
surprizes--ambuscades--mask-batteries, and a thousand other strokes of
generalship, which consist in catching at all advantages on both sides--
might reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding food and raiment
all that term for a centumvirate of the profession.

As for the Clergy--No--if I say a word against them, I'll be shot.--I have
no desire; and besides, if I had--I durst not for my soul touch upon the
subject--with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at
present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist
myself with so bad and melancholy an account--and therefore 'tis safer to
draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main
and principal point I have undertaken to clear up--and that is, How it
comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most
judgment.--But mark--I say, reported to be--for it is no more, my dear
Sirs, than a report, and which, like twenty others taken up every day upon
trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.

This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope already
weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith
make appear.

I hate set dissertations--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of
the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a
number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt
your own and your reader's conception--when in all likelihood, if you had
looked about, you might have seen something standing, or hanging up, which
would have cleared the point at once--'for what hindrance, hurt, or harm
doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot,
a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of
a goldsmith's crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?'--I
am this moment sitting upon one.  Will you give me leave to illustrate this
affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of it?-
-they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two
gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a light, as to
let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly
as if every point and particle of it was made up of sun-beams.

I enter now directly upon the point.

--Here stands wit--and there stands judgment, close beside it, just like
the two knobs I'm speaking of, upon the back of this self-same chair on
which I am sitting.

--You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its frame--as
wit and judgment are of ours--and like them too, indubitably both made and
fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all such cases of duplicated
embellishments--to answer one another.

Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this
matter--let us for a moment take off one of these two curious ornaments (I
care not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands on--
nay, don't laugh at it,--but did you ever see, in the whole course of your
lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?--Why, 'tis as
miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as much sense
and symmetry in the one as in the other:--do--pray, get off your seats only
to take a view of it,--Now would any man who valued his character a straw,
have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition?--nay, lay
your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this
one single knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can
serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the
other?--and let me farther ask, in case the chair was your own, if you
would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it would
be ten times better without any knob at all?

Now these two knobs--or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the
whole entablature--being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all others,
as I have proved it, are the most needful--the most priz'd--the most
calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at--for all
these reasons put together, there is not a mortal among us, so destitute of
a love of good fame or feeding--or so ignorant of what will do him good
therein--who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be,
or to be thought at least, master of the one or the other, and indeed of
both of them, if the thing seems any way feasible, or likely to be brought
to pass.

Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the
one--unless they laid hold of the other,--pray what do you think would
become of them?--Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravities, they must e'en
have been contented to have gone with their insides naked--this was not to
be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the case we
are upon--so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they
been satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and secreted
under their cloaks and great perriwigs, had they not raised a hue and cry
at the same time against the lawful owners.

I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning and
artifice--that the great Locke, who was seldom outwitted by false sounds--
was nevertheless bubbled here.  The cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a
one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other
implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against the poor wits
in this matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by it--it was his
glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors;--but
this was not of the number; so that instead of sitting down coolly, as such
a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter of fact before
he philosophised upon it--on the contrary he took the fact for granted, and
so joined in with the cry, and halloo'd it as boisterously as the rest.

This has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever since--but your
reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the
title to it is not worth a groat:--which by-the-bye is one of the many and
vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for
hereafter.

As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind too
freely--I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly said to their
dispraise or prejudice, by one general declaration--That I have no
abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or long
beards, any farther than when I see they are bespoke and let grow on
purpose to carry on this self-same imposture--for any purpose--peace be
with them!--> mark only--I write not for them.
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The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan W.S. Gilbert Category: Plays Sections: 50 What's this? Table of Contents		Non Fiction Short Stories Poetry Plays Sci Fi Philosophy Religion Biography