Excerpt from A Sentimental Journey about the Relationship between the Heart and the Brain
Dublin Core
Title
Excerpt from A Sentimental Journey about the Relationship between the Heart and the Brain
Subject
Emotion versus logic
Description
In Calais, the woman who interests Yorick remarks on their present interaction (holding hands and playing the game of who will let go). She suggests that the heart makes immediate decisions, and most people follow through with those, driven by their passions. Only someone like an English philosopher would spoil the moment by thinking logically, reversing the choice and deciding against experiencing love.
Creator
Laurence Sterne
Source
Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey and Other Writings. Edited by Tim Parnell and Ian Robert James Jack, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 15.
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Date
1768
Contributor
Sarah Sorme
Format
Book
Language
English
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
When the situation is, what we would wish, nothing is so ill-timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so: you thank Fortune, continued she—you had reason—the heart knew it, and was satisfied; and who but an English philosopher would have sent notices of it to the brain to reverse the judgment?
Original Format
Book
Citation
Laurence Sterne, “Excerpt from A Sentimental Journey about the Relationship between the Heart and the Brain,” Enlightenmens, accessed February 7, 2023, http://enlightenmens.lmc.gatech.edu/items/show/651.