The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

by Laurence Sterne

  —“Consider the nature of the posture in which he now lies stretch’d,—what exquisite torture he endures by it!— ’Tis all nature can bear!—Good God! See how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips,—willing to take its leave,—— but not suffered to depart!——Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell! [Then, thank God, however, quoth Trim, they have not killed him]—See him dragg’d out of it again to meet the flames, and the insults in his last agonies, which this prin-ciple,—this principle, that there can be religion without mercy, has prepared for him. [Then, thank God,—he is dead, quoth Trim,—he is out of his pain,—and they have done their worst at him.—O Sirs!—Hold your peace,Trim, said my father, going on with the sermon, lest Trim should incense Dr. Slop,—we shall never have done at this rate.]

  “The surest way to try the merit of any disputed notion is, to trace down the consequences such a notion has produced, and compare them with the spirit of Christianity;— ’tis the short and decisive rule which our Saviour hath left us, for these and such-like cases, and it is worth a thousand arguments,——By their fruits ye shall know them.39

  “I will add no further to the length of this sermon, than, by two or three short and independent rules deducible from it.

  “First, Whenever a man talks loudly against religion,— always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions which have got the better of his CREED. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbours, and where they separate, depend upon it, ’tis for no other cause but quietness sake.

  “Secondly, When a man, thus represented, tells you in any particular instance,——That such a thing goes against his conscience,—always believe he means exactly the same thing, as when he tells you such a thing goes against his stomach;—a present want of appetite being generally the true cause of both.

  “In a word,—trust that man in nothing, who has not a CONSCIENCE in every thing.

  “And, in your own case, remember this plain distinction, a mistake in which has ruined thousands,—that your conscience is not a law:––No, God and reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to determine;—not like an Asiatick Cadi,40 according to the ebbs and flows of his own passions,—but like a British judge in this land of liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faithfully declares that law which he knows already written.”

  FINIS.

  Thou hast read the sermon extremely well, Trim, quoth my father.—If he had spared his comments, replied Dr. Slop, he would have read it much better. I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered Trim, but that my heart was so full.—That was the very reason, Trim, replied my father, which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast done; and if the clergy of our church, continued my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop, would take part in what they deliver, as deeply as this poor fellow has done,—as their compositions are fine, (I deny it, quoth Dr. Slop) I maintain it, that the eloquence of our pulpits,41 with such subjects to inflame it,—would be a model for the whole world:—But, alas! continued my father, and I own it, Sir, with sorrow, that, like French politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field.—— ’Twere a pity, quoth my uncle, that this should be lost. I like the sermon well, replied my father,—’tis dramatic,——and there is something in that way of writing, when skilfully managed, which catches the attention.———We preach much in that way with us, said Dr.Slop.—I know that very well, said my father,— but in a tone and manner which disgusted Dr. Slop, full as much as his assent, simply, could have pleased him.----But in this, added Dr. Slop, a little piqued,——our sermons have greatly the advantage, that we never introduce any character into them below a patriarch or a patriarch’s wife, or a martyr or a saint.— There are some very bad characters in this, however, said my father, and I do not think the sermon a jot the worse for ’em.———But pray, quoth my uncle Toby,——who’s can this be?—How could it get into my Stevinus? A man must be as great a conjurer as Stevinus, said my father, to resolve the second question:—The first, I think, is not so difficult;—for unless my judgment greatly deceives me,——I know the author, for ’tis wrote, certainly, by the parson of the parish.

  The similitude of the stile and manner of it, with those my father constantly had heard preach’d in his parish-church, was the ground of his conjecture,—proving it as strongly, as an argument a priori,42 could prove such a thing to a philosophic mind, That it was Yorick’s and no one’s else:——It was proved to be so a posteriori, the day after, when Yorick sent a servant to my uncle Toby’s house to enquire after it.

  It seems that Yorick, who was inquisitive after all kinds of knowledge, had borrowed Stevinus of my uncle Toby, and had carelesly popp’d his sermon, as soon as he had made it, into the middle of Stevinus; and, by an act of forgetfulness, to which he was ever subject, he had sent Stevinus home, and his sermon to keep him company.

  Ill-fated sermon! Thou wast lost, after this recovery of thee, a second time, dropp’d thro’ an unsuspected fissure in thy master’s pocket, down into a treacherous and a tatter’d lining,—trod deep into the dirt by the left hind foot of his Rosinante, inhumanly stepping upon thee as thou falledst;—buried ten days in the mire,—raised up out of it by a beggar, sold for a halfpenny to a parish-clerk,—transferred to his parson,—lost for ever to thy own, the remainder of his days,—nor restored to his restless Manes till this very moment, that I tell the world the story.43

  Can the reader believe, that this sermon of Yorick’s was preach’d at an assize, in the cathedral of York, before a thousand witnesses, ready to give oath of it, by a certain prebendary of that church, and actually printed by him when he had done, ——and within so short a space as two years and three months after Yorick’s death.—Yorick, indeed, was never better served in his life!——but it was a little hard to male-treat him before, and plunder him after he was laid in his grave.

  However, as the gentleman who did it, was in perfect charity with Yorick,—and, in conscious justice, printed but a few copies to give away;—and that, I am told, he could moreover have made as good a one himself, had he thought fit,—I declare I would not have published this anecdote to the world;—nor do I publish it with an intent to hurt his character and advancement in the church;——I leave that to others;——but I find myself impell’d by two reasons, which I cannot withstand.

  The first is, That, in doing justice, I may give rest to Yorick’s ghost;—which, as the country people,—and some others, believe,——still walks.44

  The second reason is, That, by laying open this story to the world, I gain an opportunity of informing it,——That in case the character of parson Yorick, and this sample of his sermons45 is liked,—that there are now in the possession of the Shandy Family, as many as will make a hand some volume, at the world’s service,—and much good may they do it.

  CHAP. XVIII.

  OBADIAH gain’d the two crowns without dispute; for he came in jingling, with all the instruments in the green bays bag we spoke of, slung across his body, just as Corporal Trim went out of the room.

  It is now proper, I think, quoth Dr. Slop, (clearing up his looks) as we are in a condition to be of some service to Mrs. Shandy, to send up stairs to know how she goes on.

  I have ordered, answered my father, the old midwife to come down to us upon the least difficulty;——for you must know, Dr. Slop, continued my father, with a perplexed kind of a smile upon his countenance, that by express treaty, solemnly ratified between me and my wife, you are no more than an auxiliary in this affair,—and not so much as that,—unless the lean old mother of a midwife above stairs cannot do without you.— Women have their particular fancies, and in points of this nature, continued my father, where they bear the whole burden, and suffer so much acute pain for the advantage of our families, and the good of the species,—they claim a right of deciding, en Soveraines,1 in whose hands, and in what fashion, they chuse to undergo it.

  They are in the right
of it,—quoth my uncle Toby. But, Sir, replied Dr. Slop, not taking notice of my uncle Toby’s opinion, but turning to my father,—they had better govern in other points;—and a father of a family, who wished its perpetuity, in my opinion, had better exchange this prerogative with them, and give up some other rights in lieu of it.—I know not, quoth my father, answering a little too testily, to be quite dispassionate in what he said,——I know not, quoth he, what we have left to give up, in lieu of who shall bring our children into the world,— unless that,—of who shall beget them.——One would almost give up any thing, replied Dr. Slop.——I beg your pardon,— answered my uncle Toby.——Sir, replied Dr. Slop, it would astonish you to know what Improvements we have made of late years in all branches of obstetrical knowledge, but particularly in that one single point of the safe and expeditious extraction of the fœtus,——which has received such lights, that, for my part, (holding up his hands) I declare I wonder how the world has———I wish, quoth my uncle Toby, you had seen what prodigious armies we had in Flanders.

  CHAP. XIX.

  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 fifty pages ago, but that I foresaw then ’twould come in pat hereafter, and be of more advantage here than elsewhere.1––––Writers had need look before them to keep up the spirit and connection 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 whimsical in fifty other opinions. In truth, there was not a stage in the life of man, from the very first act of his begetting,—down to the lean and slipper’d pantaloon in his second childishness,2 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 common scales;—no,—he was too refined a researcher to lay open to so gross an impo-sition.—To come at the exact weight of things in the scientific steel-yard,3 the fulcrum, he would say, should be almost invisible, to avoid all friction from popular tenets;—without this the minutiæ of philosophy, which should always turn the balance, will have no weight at all.—Knowledge, like matter, he would affirm, was divisible in infinitum;4—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 well5 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;6—that the political arch was giving way;—and that the very foundations of our excellent constitution in church and state, were so sapp’d as estimators had reported.

  You cry out, he would say, we are a ruined, undone people. ——Why?—he would ask, making use of the sorites7 or syllogism of Zeno and Chrysippus, without knowing it belonged to them.—Why? why are we a ruined people?—Because we are corrupted.8——Whence is it, dear Sir, that we are corrupted?— Because we are needy;—our poverty, and not our wills, consent.9——And wherefore, he would add,—are we needy?—— From the neglect, he would answer, 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, throughout the whole circle of the sciences;—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 reasons, with which my father had urged my mother to accept of Dr. Slop’s assistance preferably to that of the old woman,—there was one of a very singular nature; which, when he had done arguing the matter with her as a Christian, and came to argue it over again with her 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 itself; 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 destruction.

  This argument, though it was intirely lost upon my mother,— had more weight with him, than all his other arguments joined together:——I will therefore endeavour 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;10 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 understanding,—was from no original sharpness or bluntness of one thinking substance 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 philosophised, 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,11— ’twas no bad conjecture;— and my father had certainly fallen with that great philosopher plumb into the center of the mistake, had it not 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,12 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 separation 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.13

  As for that certain very thin, subtle, and very fragrant juice which Coglionissimo Borri, the great Milaneze physician, affirms, in a letter to Bartholine,14 to have discovered in the cellulæ of the occipital 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 enlightened ages, there are two souls in every man living,—the one according to the great Metheglingius,15 being c
alled the Animus, the other the Anima);16—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 so ever, he would say, shock’d his imagination; he would scarce give the doctrine a hearing.

  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 mandates were issued,—was in, or near, the cerebellum, ––or rather some-where about the medulla oblongata, wherein it was generally agreed by Dutch anatomists,17 that all the minute nerves from all the organs of the seven senses18 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 another Shandean hypothesis upon these corner-stones they had laid for him;—and which said hypothesis equally stood its ground; whether the subtilty and fineness of the soul depended upon the temperature and clearness of the said liquor, or of the finer net-work and texture in the cerebellum itself; which opinion he favoured.