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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: smoking 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.
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