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 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.----