Chapter 1

by Laurence Sterne

Contents

Volume I.
Volume II.
Volume III.
Volume IV.

Laurence Sterne

Ταράσσει τοὺς Ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ Πράγματα,
Ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν Πραγμάτων Δόγματα.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
M r. P I T T.

S I R,

NEVER poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication,
than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner of the
kingdom, and in a retir’d thatch’d house, where I live in a constant
endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other
evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man
smiles,——but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to this
Fragment of Life.

I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book, by taking it—(not
under your Protection,—it must protect itself, but)—into the country
with you; where, if I am ever told, it has made you smile; or can
conceive it has beguiled you of one moment’s pain—I shall think myself
as happy as a minister of state;——perhaps much happier than any one
(one only excepted) that I have read or heard of.

_I am, GREAT SIR,
(and, what is more to your Honour)
I am, GOOD SIR,
Your Well-wisher, and
most humble Fellow-subject_,

T H E A U T H O R.

THE
LIFE and OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.

C H A P. 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 consider’d 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, ’tis not a
half-penny matter,—away they go 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.

C H A P. 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 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.

C H A P. III