, and suffering, since my
departure from Geneva, I began, for the first time, to gain my bread with
credit.

These long details of my early youth must have appeared trifling, and I
am sorry for it: though born a man, in a variety of instances, I was long
a child, and am so yet in many particulars. I did not promise the public
a great personage: I promised to describe myself as I am, and to know me
in my advanced age it was necessary to have known me in my youth. As,
in general, objects that are present make less impression on me than the
bare remembrance of them (my ideas being all from recollection), the
first traits which were engraven on my mind have distinctly remained:
those which have since been imprinted there, have rather combined with
the former than effaced them. There is a certain, yet varied succession
of affections and ideas, which continue to regulate those that follow
them, and this progression must be known in order to judge rightly of
those they have influenced. I have studied to develop the first causes,
the better to show the concatenation of effects. I would be able by some
means to render my soul transparent to the eyes of the reader, and for
this purpose endeavor to show it in every possible point of view, to give
him every insight, and act in such a manner, that not a motion should
escape him, as by this means he may form a judgment of the principles
that produce them.

Did I take upon myself to decide, and say to the reader, "Such is my
character," he might think that if I did not endeavor to deceive him,
I at least deceived myself; but in, recounting simply all that has
happened to me, all my actions, thoughts, and feelings, I cannot lead him
into an error, unless I do it wilfully, which by this means I could not
easily effect, since it is his province to compare the elements, and
judge of the being they compose: thus the result must be his work, and if
he is then deceived the error will be his own. It is not sufficient for
this purpose that my recitals should be merely faithful, they must also
be minute; it is not for me to judge of the importance of facts, I ought
to declare them simply as they are, and leave the estimate that is to be
formed of them to him. I have adhered to this principle hitherto, with
the most scrupulous exactitude, and shall not depart from it in the
continuation; but the impressions of age are less lively than those of
youth; I began by delineating the latter: sh