@panzade,
Now pan--I wouldn't post this to any old Tom, Dick or Harry.
It is Chapter XXXI of Volume VIII of Tristram Shandy.
Quote:IF anything in this world, which my
father said, could have provoked my
uncle Toby, during the time he was in
love, it was the perverse use my father
was always making of an expression of
Hilarion the hermit ; who, in speaking
of his abstinence, his watchings, flagel-
lations, and other instrumental parts of
his religion -- would say -- tho' with more
facetiousness than became an hermit --
``That they were the means he used, to
make his ass (meaning his body) leave
off kicking."
It pleased my father well ; it was not
only a laconick way of expressing ----
but of libelling, at the same time, the
desires and appetites of the lower part of
us ; so that for many years of my fa-
ther's life, 'twas his constant mode of
expression -- he never used the word pas-
sions once -- but ass always instead of
them ---- So that he might be said truly,
to have been upon the bones, or the back
of his own ass, or else of some other
man's, during all that time.
I must here observe to you, the differ-
ence betwixt
My father's ass
and my hobby-horse -- in order to
keep characters as separate as may be, in
our fancies as we go along.
For my hobby-horse, if you recollect
a little, is no way a vicious beast ; he has
scarce one hair or lineament of the ass
about him ---- 'Tis the sporting little
filly-folly which carries you out for
the present hour -- a maggot, a butterfly,
a picture, a fiddle-stick -- an uncle Toby's
siege -- or an any thing, which a man makes
a shift to get a stride on, to canter it away
from the cares and solicitudes of life --
'Tis as useful a beast as is in the whole
creation -- nor do I really see how the
world could do without it ------
---- But for my father's ass ------ oh!
mount him -- mount him -- mount him --
(that's three times, is it not?) -- mount
him not : -- 'tis a beast concupiscent -- and
foul befall the man, who does not hinder
him from kicking.
How does an atheist hinder the concupiscent beast from kicking?
Are the great and the good in N. Carolina supposed to sit idly by and allow the beast to kick to its heart's content which is the only intellectual position the atheist they are seeking to remove from office can possibly take unless he seeks to inhibit the kicking by laws which also apply to his own ass and those of his colleagues. And laws which will need to be draconian in proportion as the ass seeks to kick for the 9.3 million residents of the state.
It may be that the idea that they have overlooked an old law by default is a mere conceit on the part of atheists. They might well mean what they say with Laurence Sterne's words and their own asses in mind.
Any fool can be an atheist in a Christian world where the kicking is ready hindered. Try being free in an atheist world.
