. --
    No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby.
    Gracious heaven! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two
hands together, - there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother Toby, -
'twere almost a pity to exchange it for a knowledge. -- But I'll tell thee. --
    To understand what time is aright, without which we never can comprehend
infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the other, -- we ought seriously to
sit down and consider what idea it is we have of duration, so as to give a
satisfactory account, how we came by it. - What is that to any body? quoth my
uncle Toby.7 For if you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind, continued my
father, and observe attentively, you will perceive, brother, that whilst you and
I are talking together, and thinking and smoaking our pipes: or whilst we
receive successively ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist, and so we
estimate the existence, 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 like a smoak-jack. -- Then, brother Toby, I have nothing more to
say to you upon the subject,
