work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5088,"",Contributed by Emily Anderson. Found again reading.,2007-03-20 00:00:00 UTC,"My uncle Toby would give my father all possible fair play in this attempt; and with infinite patience would sit smoaking his pipe for whole hours together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, and trying every accessible avenue to drive Prignitz and Scroderus's solutions into it.
Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason,--or contrary to it,-- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold,--or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doctrines,--I say not,-- let school-men--scullions, anatomists, and engineers, fight for it amongst themselves.--
(III.xxxix, pp. 188-9; Norton, 171-2)",2008-10-07,16960,"","""Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason,--or contrary to it,-- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold,--or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doctrines,--I say not,-- let school-men--scullions, anatomists, and engineers, fight for it amongst themselves.""","",2016-02-23 05:13:37 UTC,"Vol. III, Chap. xxxix"
5088,"",Reading,2016-02-18 06:12:19 UTC,"Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight and transient impressions made by objects when the said organs are not dull. And, thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what it has received.--Call down Dolly your chamber-maid, and I will give you my cap and bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain that Dolly herself shall understand it as well as Malbranch.-- When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right-side;--take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception, can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing which Dolly's hand is in search of.--Your organs are not so dull that I should inform you,--'tis an inch, Sir, of red seal-wax.
When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over harden'd, it will not receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont to imprint it. Very well: If Dolly's wax, for want of better, is bees-wax, or of a temper too soft,--tho' it may receive,--it will not hold the impression, how hard soever Dolly thrusts against it; and last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble, but applied thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings the bell;--in any one of these three cases, the print, left by the thimble, will be as unlike the prototype as a brassjack.
Now you must understand that not one of these was the true cause of the confusion in my uncle Toby's discourse; and it is for that very reason I enlarge upon them so long, after the manner of great physiologists,--to shew the world what it did not arise from.
What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a fertile source of obscurity it is,--and ever will be,--and that is the unsteady uses of words which have perplexed the clearest and most exalted understandings.
(II.ii, pp. 13-16)",,24815,"","""And, thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what it has received.""","",2016-02-18 06:12:44 UTC,"Vol. II, Chap. ii"
5088,"",Reading. Text from ECCO-TCP.,2016-02-18 06:16:45 UTC,"Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight and transient impressions made by objects when the said organs are not dull. And, thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what it has received.--Call down Dolly your chamber-maid, and I will give you my cap and bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain that Dolly herself shall understand it as well as Malbranch.-- When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right-side;--take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception, can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing which Dolly's hand is in search of.--Your organs are not so dull that I should inform you,--'tis an inch, Sir, of red seal-wax.
When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over harden'd, it will not receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont to imprint it. Very well: If Dolly's wax, for want of better, is bees-wax, or of a temper too soft,--tho' it may receive,--it will not hold the impression, how hard soever Dolly thrusts against it; and last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble, but applied thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings the bell;--in any one of these three cases, the print, left by the thimble, will be as unlike the prototype as a brassjack.
Now you must understand that not one of these was the true cause of the confusion in my uncle Toby's discourse; and it is for that very reason I enlarge upon them so long, after the manner of great physiologists,--to shew the world what it did not arise from.
What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a fertile source of obscurity it is,--and ever will be,--and that is the unsteady uses of words which have perplexed the clearest and most exalted understandings.
(II.ii, pp. 13-16)
",,24816,"Sterne's run at Plato's Theatetus (and Descartes?) Should have included in BOOK! (USE IN ENTRY), but no matter, I suppose. THe best thing about this passage is that the elaboration is unceremoniously dismissed: ""not one of these was the true cause"" ","""When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right-side;--take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception, can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing which Dolly's hand is in search of.--Your organs are not so dull that I should inform you,--'tis an inch, Sir, of red seal-wax.""",Impressions,2016-02-18 14:03:20 UTC,"Vol. II, Chap. ii"
5088,"",Reading. Text from ECCO-TCP.,2016-02-18 06:29:22 UTC,"If I was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all patience for my uncle Toby's character,--I would here previously have convinced him, that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing with, as that which I have pitch'd upon. A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho' I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of electrified bodies,--and that by means of the heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the HOBBY-HORSE.--By long journies and much friction, it so happens that the body of the rider is at length fill'd as full of HOBBY-HORSICAL matter as it can hold;--so that if you are able to give but a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character of the other.
(I.xxiv, pp. 172-3)",,24818,Hobby Horses,"""A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho' I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of electrified bodies,--and that by means of the heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the HOBBY-HORSE.--By long journies and much friction, it so happens that the body of the rider is at length fill'd as full of HOBBY-HORSICAL matter as it can hold;--so that if you are able to give but a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character of the other.""","",2016-02-18 14:01:39 UTC,"Vol. I, Chap. xxiv"
5088,"",Reading. Text from ECCO-TCP.,2016-02-19 04:51:52 UTC,"Now, as it was plain to my father, that all souls were by nature equal,--and that the great difference between the most acute and the most obtuse understanding, --was from no original sharpness or bluntness of one thinking substance above or below another,--but arose merely from the lucky or unlucky organization of the body, in that part where the soul principally took up her residence,--he had made it the subject of his enquiry to find out the identical place.
Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this matter, he was satisfied it could not be where Des Cartes had fixed it, upon the top of the pineal gland of the brain; which, as he philosophised, formed a cushion for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho' to speak the truth, as so many nerves did terminate all in that one place,--'twas no bad conjecture;--and my father had certainly fallen with that great philosopher plumb into the center of the mistake, had it not been for my uncle Toby, who rescued him out of it, by a story he told him of a Walloon officer at the battle of Landen, who had one part of his brain shot away by a musket-ball,--and another part of it taken out after by a French surgeon; and, after all, recovered, and did his duty very well without it.
If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body;--and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains,--then certes the soul does not inhabit there. Q. E. D.
(II.xix, pp. 166-8)",,24827,Pineal Gland,"""Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this matter, he was satisfied it could not be where Des Cartes had fixed it, upon the top of the pineal gland of the brain; which, as he philosophised, formed a cushion for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho' to speak the truth, as so many nerves did terminate all in that one place,--'twas no bad conjecture;--and my father had certainly fallen with that great philosopher plumb into the center of the mistake, had it not been for my uncle Toby, who rescued him out of it, by a story he told him of a Walloon officer at the battle of Landen, who had one part of his brain shot away by a musket-ball,--and another part of it taken out after by a French surgeon; and, after all, recovered, and did his duty very well without it.""","",2016-02-19 04:52:11 UTC,"Vol. II, Chap. xix"
5088,"",Reading. Text from ECCO-TCP.,2016-02-19 05:09:44 UTC,"As for that certain, very thin, subtle, and very fragrant juice which Coglionissimo Borri, the great Milaneze physician, affirms, in a letter to Bartholine, to have discovered in the cellulae of the occipital parts of the cerebellum, and which he likewise affirms to be the principal seat of the reasonable soul (for, you must know, in these latter and more enlightened ages, there are two souls in every man living,--the one, according to the great Metheglingius, being called the Animus, the other the Anima);--as for this opinion, I say, of Borri,--my father could never subscribe to it by any means; the very idea of so noble, so refined, so immaterial, and so exalted a being as the Anima, or even the Animus, taking up her residence, and sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole, all day long, both summer and winter, in a puddle,--or in a liquid of any kind, how thick or thin soever, he would say, shock'd his imagination; he would scarce give the doctrine a hearing.
(II.xix, pp. 168-9)",,24829,"","""As for that certain, very thin, subtle, and very fragrant juice which Coglionissimo Borri, the great Milaneze physician, affirms, in a letter to Bartholine, to have discovered in the cellulae of the occipital parts of the cerebellum, and which he likewise affirms to be the principal seat of the reasonable soul (for, you must know, in these latter and more enlightened ages, there are two souls in every man living,--the one, according to the great Metheglingius, being called the Animus, the other the Anima);--as for this opinion, I say, of Borri,--my father could never subscribe to it by any means.""","",2016-02-19 05:09:44 UTC,"Vol. II, Chap. xix"
5088,"",Reading. Text from ECCO-TCP,2016-02-19 05:17:49 UTC,"He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act of propagation of each individual, which required all the thought in the world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible contexture in which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by the name of good natural parts, do consist;--that next to this and his Christian name, which were the two original and most efficacious causes of all;--that the third cause, or rather what logicians call the Causa sine quâ non, and without which all that was done was of no manner of significance,--was the preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the havock which was generally made in it by the violent compression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us into the world by that part foremost.
(II.xix, pp. 171-2)",,24832,"","""He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act of propagation of each individual, which required all the thought in the world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible contexture in which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by the name of good natural parts, do consist;--that next to this and his Christian name, which were the two original and most efficacious causes of all;--that the third cause, or rather what logicians call the Causa sine quâ non, and without which all that was done was of no manner of significance,--was the preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the havock which was generally made in it by the violent compression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us into the world by that part foremost.""","",2016-02-19 05:17:49 UTC,"Vol. II, Chap. xix"
5088,"",Reading. Text adapted from LION.,2016-02-23 04:25:26 UTC,"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 amongst 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 any way feasible, or likely to be brought to pass.
(III.xx, p. 106)",,24834,"","""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.""","",2016-02-23 04:25:56 UTC,"Vol. III, Chap. xx, Preface"
5088,"",Reading,2016-02-23 04:43:18 UTC,"When Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen, and busy in making a bridge,-- my uncle Toby, --the affair of the jack-boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain,--took it instantly for granted that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis d' Hôpital's bridge. ----'Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle Toby ;--pray give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him I thank him heartily.
(III.xxvi, pp. 136-7)",,24835,"","""When Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen, and busy in making a bridge,-- my uncle Toby, --the affair of the jack-boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain,--took it instantly for granted that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis d' Hôpital's bridge.""","",2016-02-23 04:43:28 UTC,"Vol. III, Chap. xxvi"
5088,"",Reading,2016-02-23 05:29:49 UTC,"'Twas well my father's passions lasted not long; for so long as they did last, they led him a busy life on't, and it is one of the most unaccountable problems that ever I met with in my observations of human nature, that nothing should prove my father's mettle so much, or make his passions go off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle Toby's questions.--Had ten dozen of hornets stung him behind in so many different places all at one time,--he could not have exerted more mechanical functions in fewer seconds,--or started half so much, as with one single quære of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him in his hobbyhorsical career.--
(III.xli, pp. 193-4; Norton, 174)",,24840,"","""'Twas well my father's passions lasted not long; for so long as they did last, they led him a busy life on't, and it is one of the most unaccountable problems that ever I met with in my observations of human nature, that nothing should prove my father's mettle so much, or make his passions go off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle Toby's questions.""","",2016-02-23 05:30:08 UTC,"Vol. III, Chap. xli"