Another motif is the author's attention to the believability of his story. Events and conversations that he personally couldn't have witnessed are told to him by someone who was involved, or else he finds documents, letters, diaries which give him necessary facts. That is one of the ways that Tristram remains Tristram and not Sterne as an omniscient narrator.
Still another very obvious motif is the relationship established between Tristram and the reader (sometimes "Sir," more often "Madam"). The reader is always in the forefront of Tristram's consciousness, and not only when he says "Dear Reader." The reader is made to participate in the book; he finds himself face to face with the author, having questions put into his mouth and supposedly having made comments that the author must answer. Sterne hoped to get the reader to experience the impressions that Tristram writes about, rather than to stand far off and objectify them. The reader was intended not to observe but to participate with Tristram in the re-creation of Tristram's sensations and to reflect upon those sensations as Tristram was reflecting. One could say that Sterne is conducting the reader on a psychoanalytic tour of both Tristram's and the reader's intellectual and emotional being.
The dispersal of the animal spirits is the first of the accidents that befall Tristram. Its importance can be judged only by what we see in Tristram's character, but if we take Walter and Tristram's word for it, it was an accident with grave consequences.
