Everything in this world, continued my father (filling a fresh
pipe)--every thing in this world, my dear brother _Toby_, has two
handles. ----Not always, quoth my uncle _Toby_. ----At least, replied my
father, everyone has two hands, ----which comes to the same thing.
----Now, if a man was to sit down coolly, and consider within himself
the make, the shape, the construction, come-at-ability, and convenience
of all the parts which constitute the whole of that animal, called
Woman, and compare them analogically ----I never understood rightly the
meaning of that word, --quoth my uncle _Toby_.--
ANALOGY, replied my father, is the certain relation and agreement which
different ----Here a devil of a rap at the door snapped my father’s
definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in two, --and, at the same time,
crushed the head of as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was
engendered in the womb of speculation; --it was some months before my
father could get an opportunity to be safely delivered of it: --And, at
this hour, it is a thing full as problematical as the subject of the
dissertation itself, --(considering the confusion and distresses of our
domestick misadventures, which are now coming thick one upon the back of
another) whether I shall be able to find a place for it in the third
volume or not.
CHAPTER VIII
It is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle
_Toby_ rung the bell, when _Obadiah_ was ordered to saddle a horse, and
go for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife; --so that no one can say, with
reason, that I have not allowed _Obadiah_ time enough, poetically
speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and come;
----though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had
time to get on his boots.
If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take
a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the
bell, and the rap at the door; --and, after finding it to be no more
than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three fifths, --should take upon
him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather
probability of time; --I would remind him, that the idea of duration,
and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of
our ideas, ----and is the true scholastic pendulum, ----and by which, as
a scholar, I will be tried in this matter, --abjuring and detesting the
jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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