The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (pdf e book reader txt) 📕

reason* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * —I own, added my father, that the offspring, upon this account, is not so under the power and jurisdiction of the mother.⁠—But the reason, replied Yorick, equally holds good for her.⁠⸺⁠She is under authority herself, said my father:⁠—and besides, continued my father, nodding his head, and laying his finger upon the side of his nose, as he assigned his reason,⁠—she is not the principal agent, Yorick.⁠—In what, quoth my uncle Toby? stopping his pipe.⁠—Though by all means, added my father (not attending to my uncle Toby) “The son ought to pay her respect,” as you may read, Yorick, at large in the first book of the Institutes of Justinian, at the eleventh title and the tenth section,⁠—I can read it as well, replied Yorick, in the Catechism. XXXII

Trim can repeat every word of it by heart, quoth my uncle Toby.⁠—Pugh! said my father, not caring to be interrupted with Trim’s saying his Catechism. He can, upon my honour, replied my uncle Toby.⁠—Ask him, Mr. Yorick, any question you please.⁠⸺⁠

—The fifth Commandment, Trim⁠—said Yorick, speaking mildly, and with a gentle nod, as to a modest Catechumen. The corporal stood silent.⁠—You don’t ask him right, said my uncle Toby, raising his voice, and giving it rapidly like the word of command:⁠⸺⁠The fifth⁠⸺⸺⁠cried my uncle Toby.⁠—I must begin with the first, an’ please your honour, said the corporal.⁠⸺⁠

—Yorick could not forbear smiling.⁠—Your reverence does not consider, said the corporal, shouldering his stick like a musket, and marching into the middle of the room, to illustrate his position,⁠—that ’tis exactly the same thing, as doing one’s exercise in the field.⁠—

“Join your right-hand to your firelock,” cried the corporal, giving the word of command, and performing the motion.⁠—

“Poise your firelock,” cried the corporal, doing the duty still both of adjutant and private man.

“Rest your firelock;”⁠—one motion, an’ please your reverence, you see leads into another.⁠—If his honour will begin but with the first⁠—

The first⁠—cried my uncle Toby, setting his hand upon his side⁠—* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  

The second⁠—cried my uncle Toby, waving his tobacco-pipe, as he would have done his sword at the head of a regiment.⁠—The corporal went through his manual with exactness! and having honoured his father and mother, made a low bow, and fell back to the side of the room.

Everything in this world, said my father, is big with jest,⁠—and has wit in it, and instruction too,⁠—if we can but find it out.

—Here is the scaffold work of Instruction, its true point of folly, without the building behind it.

—Here is the glass for pedagogues, preceptors, tutors, governors, gerund-grinders, and bear-leaders, to view themselves in, in their true dimensions.⁠—

Oh! there is a husk and shell, Yorick, which grows up with learning, which their unskilfulness knows not how to fling away!

—Sciences may be learned by rote, but Wisdom not.

Yorick thought my father inspired.⁠—I will enter into obligations this moment, said my father, to lay out all my aunt Dinah’s legacy in charitable uses (of which, by the by, my father had no high opinion), if the corporal has any one determinate idea annexed to any one word he has repeated.⁠—Prithee, Trim, quoth my father, turning round to him,⁠—What dost thou mean, by “honouring thy father and mother?”

Allowing them, an’ please your honour, three halfpence a day out of my pay, when they grow old.⁠—And didst thou do that, Trim? said Yorick.⁠—He did indeed, replied my uncle Toby.⁠—Then, Trim, said Yorick, springing out of his chair, and taking the corporal by the hand, thou art the best commentator upon that part of the Decalogue; and I honour thee more for it, corporal Trim, than if thou hadst had a hand in the Talmud itself.

XXXIII

O blessed health! cried my father, making an exclamation, as he turned over the leaves to the next chapter, thou art above all gold and treasure; ’tis thou who enlargest the soul,⁠—and openest all its powers to receive instruction and to relish virtue.⁠—He that has thee, has little more to wish for;⁠—and he that is so wretched as to want thee,⁠—wants everything with thee.

I have concentrated all that can be said upon this important head, said my father, into a very little room, therefore we’ll read the chapter quite through.

My father read as follows:

“The whole secret of health depending upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture”⁠—You have proved that matter of fact, I suppose, above, said Yorick. Sufficiently, replied my father.

In saying this, my father shut the book,⁠—not as if he resolved to read no more of it, for he kept his forefinger in the chapter:⁠⸺⁠nor pettishly,⁠—for he shut the book slowly; his thumb resting, when he had done it, upon the upper-side of the cover, as his three fingers supported the lower side of it, without the least compressive violence.⁠⸺⁠

I have demonstrated the truth of that point, quoth my father, nodding to Yorick, most sufficiently in the preceding chapter.

Now could the man in the moon be told, that a man in the earth had wrote a chapter, sufficiently demonstrating, That the secret of all health depended upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture,⁠—and that he had managed the point so well, that there was not one single word wet or dry upon radical heat or radical moisture, throughout the whole chapter,⁠—or a single syllable in it, pro or con, directly or indirectly, upon the contention betwixt these two powers in any part of the animal œconomy⁠⸺⁠

“O thou eternal Maker of all beings!”⁠—he would cry, striking his breast with his right hand (in case he had one)⁠—“Thou whose power and goodness can enlarge the faculties of thy creatures to this infinite degree of excellence and perfection,⁠—What have we Moonites done?”