spositions
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.

Chapter 1.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, bra