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_.[7] _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. [7] Vide Locke. C H A P. 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. C H A P. XIII