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e, 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
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