“Every thing in this world has two handles”

“Every thing in this world has two handles” is Walter Shandy’s compact principle of perspective: a subject may be approached from different sides, though his attempt to explain how the principle works is cut short before he can finish. The exchange with Uncle Toby makes the maxim both an invitation to reconsider and a joke about how readily abstract systems outrun their explanations.

The Maxim and Its Setting

Walter introduces the saying while filling a fresh pipe and addressing his brother. He first states that everything in the world has two handles. Uncle Toby objects that this is not always so; Walter answers by shifting the image from handles to hands, arguing that everyone has two and that this amounts to the same thing. The exchange gives the maxim its characteristic looseness: Walter treats a change in wording as if it settles the objection.

Analogy and Interruption

Walter applies his proposed method to the parts and construction of women, which he suggests should be examined coolly and compared by analogy. Uncle Toby admits that he has never properly understood the word “analogically.” Walter begins to define analogy as a relation and agreement between different things, but a loud knock at the door breaks off the definition. The interruption cuts through the reasoning at the moment it might have become precise, leaving the concept itself unfinished.

Comic Force and Narrative Afterlife

The scene’s humor rests on the contrast between Walter’s confidence in general principles and the fragility of his exposition. He presents a maxim broad enough to cover everything, yet his explanation immediately turns into a complicated inquiry that Uncle Toby cannot follow and an unexpected knock prevents him from completing. The narrator later describes the interruption as having snapped Walter’s definition, like his tobacco-pipe, in two; the dissertation is left hanging, and its eventual place in the book remains uncertain. The maxim thus survives in sharper form than the argument meant to support it: it invites multiple approaches, while the scene itself demonstrates how an explanation can be redirected, interrupted, or left unresolved.