I Have dropp'd the curtain over this
scene for a minute, -- to remind you
of one thing, -- and to inform you of
another.
What I have to inform you, comes,
I own, a little out of its due course ; --
for it should have been told a hundred
and
and fifty pages ago, but that I foresaw
then 'twould come in pat hereafter, and
be of more advantage here than else-
where. -- Writers had need look before
them to keep up the spirit and connec-
tion of what they have in hand.
When these two things are done, --
the curtain shall be drawn up again, and
my uncle Toby, my father, and Dr. Slop
shall go on with their discourse, without
any more interruption.
First, then, the matter which I have
to remind you of, is this ; -- that from
the specimens of singularity in my father's
notions in the point of Christian-names,
and that other point previous thereto, --
you was led, I think, into an opinion,
(and I am sure I said as much) that my
father was a gentleman altogether as odd
and
and whimsical in fifty other opinions.
In truth, there was not a stage in the life
of man, from the very first act of his be-
getting, -- down to the lean and slipper'd
pantaloon in his second childishness, but
he had some favourite notion to himself,
springing out of it, as sceptical, and as
far out of the high-way of thinking, as
these two which have been explained.
-- Mr. Shandy, my father, Sir, would
see nothing in the light in which others
placed it ; -- he placed things in his own
light ; -- he would weigh nothing in com-
mon scales ; -- no, -- he was too refined a
researcher to lay open to so gross an im-
position. -- To come at the exact weight
of things in the scientific steel-yard, the
fulcrum, he would say, should be almost
invisible, to avoid all friction from po-
pular tenets ; -- without this the minutiæ
of philosophy, which should always turn
L 2 the
the balance, will have no weight at
all. -- Knowledge, like matter, he would
affirm, was divisible in infinitum ; -- that
the grains and scruples were as much a
part of it, as the gravitation of the whole
world. -- In a word, he would say, error was error, --
no matter where it fell, --
whether in a fraction, -- or a pound, --
'twas alike fatal to truth, and she was
kept down at the bottom of her well as
inevitably by a mistake in the dust of a
butterfly's wing, -- as in the disk of the
sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven
put together.
He would often lament that it was for
want of considering this properly, and
of applying it skilfully to civil matters,
as well as to speculative truths, that so
many things in this world were out of
joint; -- that the political arch was giving
way ; -- and that the very foundations of
our
our excellent constitution in church and
state, were so sapp'd as estimators had re-
ported.
You cry out, he would say, we are a
ruined, undone people. -- Why ? -- he
would ask, making use of the sorites or
syllogism of Zeno and Chrysippus, without
knowing it belonged to them. -- Why ?
why are we a ruined people ? -- Because
we are corrupted. -- Whence is it, dear
Sir, that we are corrupted ? -- Because we
are needy ; -- our poverty, and not our
wills, consent. -- And wherefore, he
would add, -- are we needy ? -- From
the neglect, he would an-wer, of our
pence and our halfpence : -- Our bank-
notes, Sir, our guineas, -- nay our shillings,
take care of themselves.
'Tis the same, he would say, through-
out the whole circle of the sciences ; --
L 2
the
the great, the established points of them,
are not to be broke in upon. -- The laws
of nature will defend themselves ; -- but
error -- (he would add, looking earnestly
at my mother) -- error, Sir, creeps in thro'
the minute-holes, and small crevices,
which human nature leaves unguarded.
This turn of thinking in my father, is
what I had to remind you of : -- The
point you are to be informed of, and
which I have reserved for this place, is
as follows :
Amongst the many and excellent rea-
sons, with which my father had urged
my mother to accept of Dr. Slop's assist-
ance preferably to that of the old wo-
man, -- there was one of a very singular
nature ; which, when he had done ar-
guing the matter with her as a Christian,
and came to argue it over again with her
as
as a philosopher, ---- he had put his whole
strength to, depending indeed upon it
as his sheet anchor. ---- It failed him ;
tho' from no defect in the argument it-
self ; but that, do what he could, he
was not able for his soul to make her
comprehend the drift of it. -- Cursed
luck ! -- said he to himself, one afternoon,
as he walk'd out of the room, after he
had been stating it for an hour and a
half to her, to no manner of purpose; --
cursed luck ! said he, biting his lip as he
shut the door, -- for a man to be master
of one of the finest chains of reasoning
in nature, ---- and have a wife at the same
time with such a head-piece, that he
cannot hang up a single inference within
side of it, to save his soul from destruc-
tion.
This argument, though it was intirely
lost upon my mother, -- had more weight
L 3
with
with him, than all his other arguments
joined together : -- I will therefore en-
deavour to do it justice, -- and set it
forth with all the perspicuity I am master
of.
My father set out upon the strength
of these two following axioms :
First, That an ounce of a man's own
wit, was worth a tun of other people's ;
and,
Secondly, (Which, by the bye, was the
ground-work of the first axiom, -- tho' it
comes last) -- That every man's wit must
come from every man's own soul, -- and
no other body's.
Now, as it was plain to my father,
that all souls were by nature equal, -- and
that the great difference between the
most acute and the most obtuse under-
standing
standing ---- was from no original sharp-
ness or bluntness of one thinking sub-
stance above or below another, ---- but
arose merely from the lucky or unlucky
organization of the body, in that part
where the soul principally took up her
residence, -- he had made it the subject
of his enquiry to find out the identical
place.
Now, from the best
accounts he had
been able to get of this matter, he was
satisfied it could not be where Des Cartes
had fixed it, upon the top of the pineal
gland of the brain ; which, as he philo-
sophised, form'd a cushion for her about
the size of a marrow pea; -- tho', to speak
the truth, as so many nerves did terminate
all in that one place, -- 'twas no bad con-
jecture ; -- and my father had certainly
fallen with that great philosopher plumb
into the center of the mistake, had it not
been
been for my uncle Toby, who rescued
him out of it, by a story he told him of
a Walloon Officer at the battle of Landen,
who had one part of his brain shot away
by a musket-ball, -- and another part of
it taken out after by a French Surgeon ;
and, after all, recovered, and did his duty
very well without it.
If death, said my father, reasoning
with himself, is nothing but the separa-
tion of the soul from the body ; -- and if
it is true that people can walk about
and do their business without brains, --
then certes the soul does not inhabit
there. Q. E. D.
As for that certain very thin, subtle,
and very fragrant juice which Coglionis-
simo Borri, the great Milaneze physician,
affirms, in a letter to Bartholine, to have
discovered in the cellulæ of the occipi-
tal
tal parts of the cerebellum, and which he
likewise affirms to be the principal seat
of the reasonable soul (for, you must
know, in these latter and more enlight-
ened ages, there are two souls in every
man living, -- the one according to the
great Metheglingius, being called the Ani-
mus, the other the Anima) ; -- as for this
opinion, I say, of Borri, -- my father
could never subscribe to it by any means ;
the very idea of so noble, so refined, so
immaterial, and so exalted a being as the
Anima, or even the Animus, taking up
her residence, and sitting dabbling, like
a tad-pole, all day long, both summer
and winter, in a puddle, -- or in a liquid
of any kind, how thick or thin soever,
he would say, shock'd his imagination ;
he would scarce give the doctrine a hear-
ing.
what-
What, therefore, seem'd the least liable
to objections of any, was, that the chief
sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul,
and to which place all intelligences were
referred, and from whence all her man-
dates were issued, -- was in, or near, the
cerebellum, -- or rather some-where about
the medulla oblongata, wherein it was
generally agreed by Dutch anatomists,
that all the minute nerves from all the
organs of the seven senses concentered,
like streets and winding alleys, into a
square.
So far there was nothing singular in
my father's opinion, -- he had the best of
philosophers, of all ages and climates,
to go along with him. -- But here he
took a road of his own, setting up ano-
ther Shandean hypothesis upon these cor-
ner-stones they had laid for him ; -- and
which
which said hypothesis equally stood its
ground ; whe ther the subtilty and fine-
ness of the soul depended upon the tem-
perature and clearness of the said liquor,
or of the finer net-work and texture
in the cerebellum itself ; which opinion
he favoured.
He maintained, that next to the due
care to be taken in the act of propaga-
tion of each individual, which required
all the thought in the world, as it laid
the foundation of this incomprehensible
contexture in which wit, memory, fancy,
eloquence, and what is usually meant by
the name of good natural parts, do con-
sist ; -- that next to this and his Christian-
name, which were the two original and
most efficacious causes of all ; -- that the
third cause, or rather what logicians call
the Causa sine quâ non, and without which
all
all that was done was of no manner of
significance, -- was the preservation of this
delicate and fine-spun web, from the ha-
vock which was generally made in it by
the violent compression and crush which
the head was made to undergo, by the
nonsensical method of bringing us into
the world by that part foremost.
---- This requires explanation.
My father, who dipp'd into all kinds
of books, upon looking into Lithopædus
Senonesis de Partu difficili*, published by
Adri-
* The author is here twice mistaken ; ------ for Li-
thopædus should be wrote thus, Lithopædii Senonensis
Icon. The second mistake is, that this Lithopædus
is not an author, but a drawing of a petrified child.
The account of this, published by Albosius, 1580,
may be seen at the end of Cordæus's works in Spachius.
Mr. Tristram Shandy has been led into this error,
either from seeing Lithopædus's name of late in a
catalogue of learned writers in Dr. ---- , or by mi-
staking Lithopædus for Trinecavellius, -- from the too
great similitude of the names.
Adrianus Smelvgot, had found out, That
the lax and pliable state of a child's
head in parturition, the bones of the
cranium having no sutures at that time,
was such, -- that by force of the woman's
efforts, which, in strong labour-pains,
was equal, upon an average, to a weight
of 470 pounds averdupoise acting per-
pendicularly upon it ; -- it so happened
that, in 49 instances out of 50, the said
head was compressed and moulded into
the shape of an oblong conical piece of
dough, such as a pastry-cook generally
rolls up in order to make a pye of. ----
Good God ! cried my father, what ha-
vock and destruction must this make in
the infinitely fine and tender texture of
the cerebellum ! -- Or if there is such a
juice as Borri pretends, -- is it not enough
to make the clearest liquor in the world
both feculent and mothery?
But
But how great was his apprehension,
when he further understood, that this
force, acting upon the very vertex of the
head, not only injured the brain itself or
cerebrum, ---- but that it necessarily
squeez'd and propell'd the cerebrum to-
wards the cerebellum, which was the
immediate seat of the understanding. ----
Angels and Ministers of grace defend us !
cried my father, -- can any soul withstand
this shock ? -- No wonder the intellectual
web is so rent and tatter'd as we see it ;
and that so many of our best heads are
no better than a puzzled skein of silk, --
all perplexity, -- all confusion within side.
But when my father read on, and was
let into the secret, that when a child was
turn'd topsy-turvy, which was easy for
an operator to do, and was extracted by
the feet ; -- that instead of the cerebrum
being
being propell'd towards the cerebellum,
the cerebellum, on the contrary, was pro-
pell'd simply towards the cerebrum where
it could do no manner of hurt : -- By
heavens ! cried he, the world is in a con-
spiracy to drive out what little wit God
has given us, -- and the professors of the
obstetrick art are listed into the same
conspiracy. -- What is it to me which end
of my son comes foremost into the world,
provided all goes right after, and his
cerebellum escapes uncrushed ?
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when
once a man has conceived it, that it assi-
mulates every thing to itself as proper
nourishment ; and, from the first moment
of your begetting it, it generally grows
the stronger by every thing you see, hear,
read, or understand. This is of great
use.
When
When my father was gone with this
about a month, there was scarce a phæ-
nomenon of stupidity or of genius, which
he could not readily solve by it ; -- it ac-
counted for the eldest son being the great-
est blockhead in the family. -- Poor Devil,
he would say, -- he made way for the capa-
city of his younger brothers. -- It unriddled
the observation of drivellers and mon-
strous heads, -- shewing, a priori, it could
not be otherwise, - - unless * * * * I don't
know what. It wonderfully explain'd and
accounted for the acumen of the Asiatick
genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a
more penetrating intuition of minds, in
warmer climates ; not from the loose and
common-place solution of a clearer sky,
and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c. --
which, for aught he knew, might as well
rarify and dilute the faculties of the soul
into nothing, by one extreme, -- as they
are
are condensed in colder climates by the
other ; -- but he traced the affair up to its
spring-head ; -- shew'd that, in warmer
climates, nature had laid a lighter tax
upon the fairest parts of the creation ; --
their pleasures more ; -- the necessity of
their pains less, insomuch that the pres-
sure and resistance upon the vertex was
so slight, that the whole organization of
the cerebellum was preserved ; -- nay, he
did not believe, in natural births, that
so much as a single thread of the net-
work was broke or displaced, -- so that
the soul might just act as she liked.
When my father had got so far, --
what a blaze of light did the accounts of
the Cæsarian section, and of the towering
geniuses who had come safe into the
world by it, cast upon this hypothesis ?
Here you see, he would say, there was no
injury done to the sensorium ; -- no pres-
VOL.II M sure
sure of the head against the pelvis ; -- no
propulsion of the cerebrum towards the
cerebellum, either by the oss pubis on this
side, or the oss coxcygis on that ; -- and,
pray, what were the happy consequences ?
Why, Sir, your Julius Cæsar, who gave
the operation a name ; -- and your Her-
mes Trismegistus, who was born so before
ever the operation had a name ; -- your
Scipio Africanus ; your Manlius Torquatus ;
our Edward the sixth, -- who, had he
lived, would have done the same honour
to the hypothesis : -- These, and many
more, who figur'd high in the annals of
fame, -- all came side-way, Sir, into the
world.
This incision of the abdomen and ute-
rus, ran for six weeks together in my fa-
ther's head ; -- he had read, and was satis-
fied, that wounds in the epigastrium, and
those in the matrix, were not mortal ; --
so
so that the belly of the mother might be
opened extremely well to give a passage
to the child. -- He mentioned the thing
one afternoon to my mother, -- merely as
a matter of fact ; -- but seeing her turn as
pale as ashes at the very mention of it,
as much as the operation flattered his
hopes, -- he thought it as well to say no
more of it, -- contenting himself with ad-
miring -- what he thought was to no pur-
pose to propose.
This was my father Mr. Shandy's hypo-
thesis ; concerning which I have only
to add, that my brother Bobby did as
great honour to it (whatever he did to
the family) as any one of the great heroes
we spoke of : -- For happening not only
to be christen'd, as I told you, but to be
born too, when my father was at Epsom, --
being moreover my mother's first child, --
coming into the world with his head
M2
foremost
foremost, -- and turning out afterwards a
lad of wonderful slow parts, -- my father
spelt all these together into his opinion ;
and as he had failed at one end, -- he was
determined to try the other.
This was not to be expected from one
of the sisterhood, who are not easily to be
put out of their way, -- and was therefore
one of my father's great reasons in favour
of a man of science, whom he could bet-
ter deal with.
Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop was
the fittest for my father's purpose ; -- for
tho' his new-invented forceps was the
armour he had proved, and what he
maintained, to be the safest instrument of
deliverance, -- yet, it seems, he had scat-
tered a word or two in his book, in fa-
vour of the very thing which ran in my
father's fancy ; -- tho' not with a view to
the
the soul's good in extracting by the feet,
as was my father's system, -- but for rea-
sons merely obstetrical.
This will account for the coallition
betwixt my father and Dr. Slop, in the
ensuing discourse, which went a little
hard against my uncle Toby. -- In what
manner a plain man, with nothing but
common sense, could bear up against two
such allies in science, -- is hard to con-
ceive. -- You may conjecture upon it,
if you please, -- and whilst your imagina-
tion is in motion, you may encourage it
to go on, and discover by what causes
and effects in nature it could come to
pass, that my uncle Toby got his modesty
by the wound he received upon his
groin. -- You may raise a system to ac-
count for the loss of my nose by marriage
articles, -- and shew the world how it
could happen, that I should have the
mis-
misfortune to be called TRISTRAM,
in
opposition to my father's hypothesis,
and the wish of the whole family, God-fathers
and God-mothers not excepted. -- These,
with fifty other points left yet unravelled,
you may endeavour to solve if you have
time; -- but I tell you before-hand it will
be in vain, -- for not the sage Alquife, the
magician in Don Belianis of Greece, nor
the no less famous Urganda, the sorceress
his wife, (were they alive) could pretend
to come within a league of the truth.
The reader will be content to wait for
a full explanation of these matters till
the next year, -- when a series of things
will be laid open which he little expects.
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