THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN. CHAPTER I. I WISH either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me: had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; that not only the production of a rational being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius, and the very cast of his mind, and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house, might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost; had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world from that in which the reader is likely to see me. Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it; you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c. &c. and a great deal to that purpose: - well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense, or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into; so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 't is not a halfpenny matter, away they go Tristram Shandy. -- 1 cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden walk, which when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it. Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock? Good G-! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time, Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?-Nothing. CHAPTER II. THEN, positively, there is nothing in the question that I can see, either good or bad. Then, let me tell you, Sir, it was a very unseasonable question at least, because it scattered and dispersed the animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted, and gone hand in hand with the Homunculus, and conducted him safe to the place destined for his reception. The Homunculus, Sir, in however low and ludicrous a light he may appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice; to the eye of reason in scientific research, he stands confessed a being guarded and circumscribed with rights. The minutest philosophers, who, by the bye, have the most enlarged understandings (their souls being inversely as their enquiries) show us incontestably that the Homunculus is created by the same hand, engendered in the same course of nature, -endowed with the same locomotive powers and faculties with - that he consists, as we do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, marrow, brains, glands, genitals, humours, and articulations; is a being of as much activity, — and, in all senses of the word, as much and as truly our fellow-creature as my Lord Chancellor of England. He may be benefited, he may be injured, redress; in a word, he has all the claims and rights of humanity which Tully, Puffendorf, or the best ethic writers allow to arise out of that state and relation. us: - he may obtain Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way alone! or that, through terror of it, natural to so young a traveller, my little gentleman had got to his journey's end miserably spent; - his muscular strength and virility worn down to a thread; his own animal spirits ruffled beyond description, and that in this sad disordered state of nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or a series of melancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long, long months together, I tremble to think what a foundation had been laid for a thousand weaknesses both of body and mind, which no skill of the physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards have set thoroughly to rights. CHAPTER III. To my uncle, Mr. Toby Shandy, do I stand indebted for the preceding anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher, and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft and heavily complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my uncle Toby well remembered, upon his observing a most unaccountable obliquity (as he called it) in my manner of setting up my top; and justifying the principles upon which I had done it, the old gentleman shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than reproach, he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me, that I should neither think nor act like any other man's child: But, alas! continued he, shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a tear which was trickling down his cheeks, my Tristram's misfortunes began nine months before ever he came into the world! — My mother, who was sitting by, looked up; but she knew no more than her backside what my father meant; but my uncle, Mr. Toby Shandy, who had been often informed of the affair, understood him very well. CHAPTER IV. I KNOW there are readers in the world, as well as many other good people in it who are no readers at all. - who find them |