people to read. Anyway, I am not strong-minded enough
for that, and I don't see why I should be. But you see a fancy has
occurred to me and I want to realise it at all costs. Let me explain.

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but
only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would
not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in
secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even
to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored
away in his mind. The more decent he is, the greater the number of such
things in his mind. Anyway, I have only lately determined to remember
some of my early adventures. Till now I have always avoided them, even
with a certain uneasiness. Now, when I am not only recalling them, but
have actually decided to write an account of them, I want to try the
experiment whether one can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and
not take fright at the whole truth. I will observe, in parenthesis,
that Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility,
and that man is bound to lie about himself. He considers that Rousseau
certainly told lies about himself in his confessions, and even
intentionally lied, out of vanity. I am convinced that Heine is right;
I quite understand how sometimes one may, out of sheer vanity,
attribute regular crimes to oneself, and indeed I can very well
conceive that kind of vanity. But Heine judged of people who made
their confessions to the public. I write only for myself, and I wish
to declare once and for all that if I write as though I were addressing
readers, that is simply because it is easier for me to write in that
form. It is a form, an empty form--I shall never have readers. I have
made this plain already ...

I don't wish to be hampered by any restrictions in the compilation of
my notes. I shall not attempt any system or method. I will jot things
down as I remember them.

But here, perhaps, someone will catch at the word and ask me: if you
really don't reckon on readers, why do you make such compacts with
yourself--and on paper too--that is, that you won't attempt any system
or method, that you jot things down as you remember them, and so on,
and so on? Why are you explaining? Why do you apologise?

Well, there it is, I answer.

There is a whole psychology in all this, though. Perhaps it is simply
that I am a coward. And perhaps that