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