C H A P. XXXIII
THE gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms——I mean in man—for in superior classes of being, such as angels and spirits——’tis all done, may it please your worships, as they tell me, by INTUITION;—and beings inferior, as your worships all know——syllogize by their noses: though there is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at its ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, are so wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the same fashion, and oft-times to make very well out too:——but that’s neither here nor there——
The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or—the great and principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third (called the _medius terminus_); just as a man, as _Locke_ well observes, by a yard, finds two mens nine-pin-alleys to be of the same length, which could not be brought together, to measure their equality, by _juxta-position._
Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle _Toby_’s deportment—what great attention he gave to every word—and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of it——surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his thumb——then fore-right——then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and fore-shortenings——he would have concluded my uncle _Toby_ had got hold of the _medius terminus_, and was syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in order, as my father laid them before him. This, by-the-bye, was more than my father wanted——his aim in all the pains he was at in these philosophick lectures—was to enable my uncle _Toby_ not to _discuss_——but _comprehend_—to _hold_ the grains and scruples of learning——not to _weigh_ them.——My uncle _Toby_, as you will read in the next chapter, did neither the one or the other.
C H A P. XXXIV
’TIS a pity, cried my father one winter’s night, after a three hours painful translation of _Slawkenbergius_——’tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mother’s threadpaper into the book for a mark, as he spoke——that truth, brother _Toby_, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.——
Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle _Toby_’s fancy, during the time of my father’s explanation of _Prignitz_ to him——having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green;——his body might as well have taken a turn there too—so that with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the _medius terminus_——my uncle _Toby_ was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, as if my father had been translating _Hafen Slawkenbergius_ from the _Latin_ tongue into the _Cherokee._ But the word _siege_, like a talismanic power, in my father’s metaphor, wafting back my uncle _Toby_’s fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch—he open’d his ears——and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit—my father with great pleasure began his sentence again——changing only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father apprehended from it.
’Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother _Toby_——considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in their solutions of noses.——Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle _Toby_.
——My father thrust back his chair——rose up—put on his hat——took four long strides to the door——jerked it open——thrust his head half way out——shut the door again——took no notice of the bad hinge—returned to the table—pluck’d my mother’s thread-paper out of _Slawkenbergius_’s book——went hastily to his bureau—walked slowly back—twisted my mother’s thread-paper about his thumb—unbutton’d his waistcoat—threw my mother’s thread-paper into the fire——bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill’d his mouth with bran—confounded it;—but mark!—the oath of confusion was levell’d at my uncle _Toby_’s brain—which was e’en confused enough already——the curse came charged only with the bran—the bran, may it please your honours, was no more than powder to the ball.
’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 hobby-horsical career.
’Twas all one to my uncle _Toby_——he smoked his pipe on with unvaried composure——his heart never intended offence to his brother—and as his head could seldom find out where the sting of it lay——he always gave my father the credit of cooling by himself.——He was five minutes and thirty-five seconds about it in the present case.
By all that’s good! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself, and taking the oath out of _Ernulphus_’s digest of curses——(though to do my father justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. _Slop_ in the affair of _Ernulphus_) which he as seldom committed as any man upon earth)——By all that’s good and great! brother _Toby_, said my father, if it was not for the aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do—you would put a man beside all temper.——Why, by the _solutions_ of noses, of which I was telling you, I meant, as you might have known, had you favoured me with one grain of attention, the various accounts which learned men of different kinds of knowledge have given the world of the causes of short and long noses.——There is no cause but one, replied my uncle _Toby_——why one man’s nose is longer than another’s, but because that God pleases to have it so.——That is _Grangousier_’s solution, said my father.—’Tis he, continued my uncle _Toby_, looking up, and not regarding my father’s interruption, who makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and proportions, and for such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom,.——’Tis a pious account, cried my father, but not philosophical—there is more religion in it than sound science. ’Twas no inconsistent part of my uncle _Toby_’s character——that he feared God, and reverenced religion.——So the moment my father finished his remark——my uncle _Toby_ fell a whistling _Lillabullero_ with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.—
What is become of my wife’s thread-paper?
C H A P. XXXV
NO matter—as an appendage to seamstressy, the thread-paper might be of some consequence to my mother—of none to my father, as a mark in _Slawkenbergius. Slawkenbergius_ in every page of him was a rich treasure of inexhaustible knowledge to my father—he could not open him amiss; and he would often say in closing the book, that if all the arts and sciences in the world, with the books which treated of them, were lost—should the wisdom and policies of governments, he would say, through disuse, ever happen to be forgot, and all that statesmen had wrote or caused to be written, upon the strong or the weak sides of courts and kingdoms, should they be forgot also—and _Slawkenbergius_ only left——there would be enough in him in all conscience, he would say, to set the world a-going again. A treasure therefore was he indeed! an institute of all that was necessary to be known of noses, and every thing else—at _matin_, noon, and vespers was _Hafen Slawkenbergius_ his recreation and delight: ’twas for ever in his hands——you would have sworn, Sir, it had been a canon’s prayer-book—so worn, so glazed, so contrited and attrited was it with fingers and with thumbs in all its parts, from one end even unto the other.
I am not such a bigot to _Slawkenbergius_ as my father;——there is a fund in him, no doubt: but in my opinion, the best, I don’t say the most profitable, but the most amusing part of _Hafen Slawkenbergius_, is his tales——and, considering he was a _German_, many of them told not without fancy:——these take up his second book, containing nearly one half of his folio, and are comprehended in ten decads, each decad containing ten tales——Philosophy is not built upon tales; and therefore ’twas certainly wrong in _Slawkenbergius_ to send them into the world by that name!——there are a few of them in his eighth, ninth, and tenth decads, which I own seem rather playful and sportive, than speculative—but in general they are to be looked upon by the learned as a detail of so many independent facts, all of them turning round somehow or other upon the main hinges of his subject, and added to his work as so many illustrations upon the doctrines of noses.