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Sensory homunculus: Model showing what a man's body would look like if each part grew in proportion to the area of the cortex of the brain concerned with its sensory perception.

Alas, Tristram was destined to be a disappointment to his father, Walter Shandy who saw the signs of calamity in even the most minor of incidents. The story opens with the night of Tristram's conception and a terrible coitus interruptus which robbed the poor child of any prospect of having good fortune.

...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 tracts and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny 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.

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) shew 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 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 benefited, ? he may be injured, ? he may obtain redress; ? in a word, he has all the claims and rights of humanity, which Tully, Puffendorff, or the best ethic 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 disordered state of nerves, he had laid 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.

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 affaire ? understood him very well.

A night on the turps. Sterne, although a man of the cloth, was apparently a bit of a lad (top right).

For there is some truth in this thing, although for a long time it was held in a most occult manner and with secrecy, while there was no little doubt and question among some of the old Philosophers, whether it was possible to Nature and Art, that a Man should be begotten without the female body and the natural womb. I answer hereto, that this is in no way opposed to Spagyric Art [alchemy] and to Nature, nay, that it is perfectly possible...

Let the semen of a man putrefy by itself in a sealed cucurbite [flask] with the highest putrefaction of venter equinus [from the womb of a horse] for forty days, or until it begins at last to live, move, and be agitated, which can easily be seen. At this time it will be in some degree like a human being, but, nevertheless, transparent and without a body. If now, after this, it be every day nourished and fed cautiously with the arcanum of human blood, and kept for forty weeks in the perpetual and equal heat of venter equinus, it becomes thencefold a true living infant, having all the members of a child that is born from a woman, but much smaller. This we call a homunculus; and it should be afterwards educated with the greatest care and zeal, until it grows up and starts to display intelligence...

Now, this is one of the greatest secrets which God has revealed to mortal and fallible man. It is a miracle and a marvel of God, an arcanum above all arcana, and deserves to be kept secret until the last of times, when there shall be nothing hidden, but all things shall be manifest. And although up to this time it has not been known to men, it was, nevertheless, known to the wood-sprites and nymphs and giants long ago, because they themselves were sprung from this source; since from such homunculi when they come to manhood are produced giants, pygmies,and other marvelous people, who get great victories over their enemies, and know all secrets and hidden matters