When Toby is reminded of Stevinus, we have another example of "mad" Associationism: Dr. Slop must have come in a wind-driven machine like Stevinus'. Tristram manipulates the Stevinus motif the way he did the interrupted "I think — ": he leads up to it and backs away, teasing us with it before finally telling us the why of the association in Toby's mind.
The episode of Uncle Toby and the fly has always been a favorite. Many people who reject Tristram Shandy as too chaotic, too bawdy, or too dull cherish this story among others. The story illustrates the eighteenth-century doctrines of benevolence and sentimentalism: the tender emotions of the reader are awakened by such gentleness and delicacy of feeling. It was physically constructive and healthful to experience and participate in such tenderness and goodness. Fortunately, Uncle Toby is such a truly good character with other interesting and delightful traits that we don't see him as a one-sided goody-goody. Earlier readers were quite content to interpret him in that light, however. The writer of the book enjoys his own delicate sensibility (i.e., sensitivity) and his responses to those delicate emotions. At the same time, however, he (both Tristram and Sterne) suggests in a subtle way that it is somewhat phony, exaggerated, and superficial: note, for example, how Toby speaks to the fly — "I'll not hurt a hair of thy head." After all, it's a fly. Nevertheless, Toby's goodness is touching and real, and it is easy to share William Hazlitt's opinion that he is "one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature."
Two more of Walter's theories never get told: On the Right and Wrong Ends of a Woman, and On Economics.
