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

of most judgment.⁠⸺⁠But mark⁠—I say, reported to be⁠—for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and which, like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.

This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope already weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith make appear.

I hate set dissertations⁠⸺⁠and above all things in the world, ’tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your reader’s conception⁠—when in all likelihood, if you had looked about, you might have seen something standing, or hanging up, which would have cleared the point at once⁠—“for what hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of a goldsmith’s crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?”⁠—I am this moment sitting upon one. Will you give me leave to illustrate this affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of it?⁠—they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a light, as to let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if every point and particle of it was made up of sunbeams.

I enter now directly upon the point.

—Here stands wit⁠—and there stands judgment, close beside it, just like the two knobs I’m speaking of, upon the back of this selfsame chair on which I am sitting.

—You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its frame⁠—as wit and judgment are of ours⁠—and like them too, indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all such cases of duplicated embellishments⁠⸺⸺⁠to answer one another.

Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this matter⁠—let us for a moment take off one of these two curious ornaments (I care not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands on⁠—nay, don’t laugh at it,⁠—but did you ever see, in the whole course of your lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?⁠—Why, ’tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as much sense and symmetry in the one as in the other:⁠⸺⁠do⁠⸺⁠pray, get off your seats only to take a view of it.⁠⸺⁠Now would any man who valued his character a straw, have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition?⁠—nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this one single knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the other?⁠—and let me farther ask, in case the chair was your own, if you would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it would be ten times better without any knob at all?

Now these two knobs⁠⸻or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the whole entablature⁠⸺⁠being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all others, as I have proved it, are the most needful⁠⸺⁠the most priz’d⁠—the most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at⁠—for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal among us, so destitute of a love of good fame or feeding⁠⸺⁠or so ignorant of what will do him good therein⁠—who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master of the one or the other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing seems anyway feasible, or likely to be brought to pass.

Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the one⁠—unless they laid hold of the other,⁠⸺⁠pray what do you think would become of them?⁠⸺⁠Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravities, they must e’en have been contented to have gone with their insides naked⁠⸺⁠this was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the case we are upon⁠⸺⁠so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and secreted under their cloaks and great perriwigs, had they not raised a hue and cry at the same time against the lawful owners.

I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning and artifice⁠⸺⁠that the great Locke, who was seldom outwitted by false sounds⁠⸻was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against the poor wits in this matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by it⁠—it was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors;⁠⸺⁠but this was not of the number; so that instead of sitting down coolly, as such a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter of fact before he philosophised upon it⁠⸺⁠on the contrary he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the cry, and halloo’d it as boisterously as the rest.

This has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever since⁠⸺⁠but your reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the title to it is not worth a groat:⁠⸺⁠which by the by is one of the many and vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for hereafter.

As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind too freely⁠⸻I beg