f
friendship, and in the midst of which I have ever lived. To enable me to
write well, I have only to think that my readers will belong to that
polite society:

'Quoecunque dixi, si placuerint, dictavit auditor.'

Should there be a few intruders whom I can not prevent from perusing my
Memoirs, I must find comfort in the idea that my history was not written
for them.

By recollecting the pleasures I have had formerly, I renew them, I enjoy
them a second time, while I laugh at the remembrance of troubles now
past, and which I no longer feel. A member of this great universe, I
speak to the air, and I fancy myself rendering an account of my
administration, as a steward is wont to do before leaving his situation.
For my future I have no concern, and as a true philosopher, I never would
have any, for I know not what it may be: as a Christian, on the other
hand, faith must believe without discussion, and the stronger it is, the
more it keeps silent. I know that I have lived because I have felt, and,
feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I
shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel.

Should I perchance still feel after my death, I would no longer have any
doubt, but I would most certainly give the lie to anyone asserting before
me that I was dead.

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my
memory can evoke; it will therefore commence when I had attained the age
of eight years and four months. Before that time, if to think is to live
be a true axiom, I did not live, I could only lay claim to a state of
vegetation. The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made
in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence
of memory. The mnemonic organ was developed in my head only eight years
and four months after my birth; it is then that my soul began to be
susceptible of receiving impressions. How is it possible for an
immaterial substance, which can neither touch nor be touched to receive
impressions? It is a mystery which man cannot unravel.

A certain philosophy, full of consolation, and in perfect accord with
religion, pretends that the state of dependence in which the soul stands
in relation to the senses and to the organs, is only incidental and
transient, and that it will reach a condition of freedom and happiness
when the death of the body shall have delivered it from that state of
tyrannic subjection. This is ve