ESC: English Studies in Canada

S E L F - K N O W L E D G E A N D T H E L O C K E A N “ S E L F ” I N T H E S E R M O N S O F M R . Y O R I C K : A L I N K W I T H T H E S H A N D E A N W O R L D MARCO P. LOVERSO Concordia College I n the early pages of a very fine discussion of Tristram Shandy, Martin Battestin argues that Sterne’s modernity can be traced to his movement away from Augustan reliance on fixed world views in favour of a more relativistic and subjective stance: In Tristram Shandy traditional explanations of the human condition have given way to a distinctly ‘modem’ view of man based on Lockean epistemology. As Tom Jones is the fictional embodiment of the Augustan ethos most memorably articulated in An Essay on Man, Sterne’s remarkable book is the objectification in art of the new subjectivism implicit in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the work that Tristram calls ‘a history-book . . . of what passes in a man’s own mind’ (p. 66) and that his author valued next to the Bible. However orthodox he may have been as a priest, as a novelist Sterne conceived the curse of Adam not in Christian terms, according to the Augustinian doctrine of innate depravity, but in terms of the new philosophy: as the nature of the mind itself, whose mechanism, beyond our power to control, limits our knowledge of the world to our experience of it, isolating the individual within the prison of the self. Solipsism, which for Swift or Fielding, let us say, is the consequence of pride and self-love, is for Sterne a condition of life which can be mitigated neither by the will nor by the reason, but by feeling and the imagination. The mind itself has become the marplot of Eden.1 What is particularly interesting here is the distinction that is being drawn between two seemingly distinct sides of Sterne — the “orothdox” priest and the “modern” novelist. The implication is that there is little or no relation­ ship between Sterne’s religious thought and writings and his fictional works. However, if we take time to look at The Sermons of Mr. Yorick again, we can see that this is not quite the case. Indeed, even though, as Hammond has shown,2 The Sermons are very much in the Latitudinarian tradition, they also reflect a more “modem,” Lockean orientation that links them with Sterne’s fiction. E n g l is h St u d ie s in C anada, v iii, 2, June 1982 As we shall see, Sterne seems to define the “self” as consciousness, much as Locke did. It is this sense of the human self as consciousness that lies at the heart of Sterne’s concern both as a moralist and as an artist. In The Ser­ mons, Sterne places a great deal of emphasis on the individual’s duty to examine himself and to be aware of his own inner motivations. This same preoccupation manifests itself in Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Jour­ ney, most prominently through the creation of self-conscious narrators who attempt to increase the reader’s awareness by amiably riding their hobby­ horses and by describing the equally amiable hobbyhorses of others. What is of special interest for the present discussion is that the epistemological and moral positions that led to the creation of the Shandean hobbyhorses can be found in The Sermons. Sterne’s first description of the problems of self-knowledge appears in the sermon entitled “ Self-Knowledge” : To know one’s self, one would think could be no very difficult lesson; — for who you’ll say can well be truly ignorant of himself and the true disposition of his own heart: If a man thinks at all, he cannot be a stranger to what passes there — he must be conscious of his own thoughts and desires, he must remember his past pursuits, and the true springs and motives which in general have...