Date: 1760-7

"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 unl...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"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 m...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"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."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"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 ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"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, s...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"What, therefore, seem'd the least liable to objections of any, was, that the chief sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul, and to which place all intelligences were referred, and from whence all her mandates were issued,--was in, or near, the cerebellum,--or rather some-where a...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"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 natu...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"You may conjecture upon it, if you please,--and whilst your imagination is in motion, you may encourage it to go on, and discover by what causes and effects in nature it could come to pass, that my uncle Toby got his modesty by the wound he received upon his groin."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"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...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"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."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)