The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | Page 2

--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 confess'd--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) shew us incontestably, that the Homunculus is created by the
same hand,--engender'd in the same course of nature,--endow'd with the same
loco-motive powers and faculties with us:--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
benefitted,--he may be injured,--he may obtain redress; in a word, he has all the claims
and rights of humanity, which Tully, Puffendorf, or the best ethick writers allow to arise
out of that state and relation.
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 disorder'd 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 1.
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 remember'd, upon his observing a most
unaccountable obliquity, (as he call'd 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, look'd 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 1.
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 themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole secret
from first to last, of every thing which concerns you.
It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a backwardness in my
nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I have been so very particular already. As
my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right,
will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men whatever,--be no less read
than the Pilgrim's Progress itself--and in the end, prove the very thing which Montaigne
dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window;--I find it
necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and therefore must beg pardon for going
on a little farther in the same way: For which cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the
history of myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing every thing
in it, as Horace says, ab Ovo.
Horace, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that gentleman is
speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy;--(I forget which,) besides, if it was not so, I
should beg Mr. Horace's pardon;--for in writing