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
existenc