ry fine, but, apart from religion, where
is the proof of it all? Therefore, as I cannot, from my own information,
have a perfect certainty of my being immortal until the dissolution of my
body has actually taken place, people must kindly bear with me, if I am
in no hurry to obtain that certain knowledge, for, in my estimation, a
knowledge to be gained at the cost of life is a rather expensive piece of
information. In the mean time I worship God, laying every wrong action
under an interdict which I endeavour to respect, and I loathe the wicked
without doing them any injury. I only abstain from doing them any good,
in the full belief that we ought not to cherish serpents.

As I must likewise say a few words respecting my nature and my
temperament, I premise that the most indulgent of my readers is not
likely to be the most dishonest or the least gifted with intelligence.

I have had in turn every temperament; phlegmatic in my infancy; sanguine
in my youth; later on, bilious; and now I have a disposition which
engenders melancholy, and most likely will never change. I always made my
food congenial to my constitution, and my health was always excellent. I
learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess
either of food or abstinence, and I never had any physician except
myself. I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved
in me more dangerous than the excess in too much; the last may cause
indigestion, but the first causes death.

Now, old as I am, and although enjoying good digestive organs, I must
have only one meal every day; but I find a set-off to that privation in
my delightful sleep, and in the ease which I experience in writing down
my thoughts without having recourse to paradox or sophism, which would be
calculated to deceive myself even more than my readers, for I never could
make up my mind to palm counterfeit coin upon them if I knew it to be
such.

The sanguine temperament rendered me very sensible to the attractions of
voluptuousness: I was always cheerful and ever ready to pass from one
enjoyment to another, and I was at the same time very skillful in
inventing new pleasures. Thence, I suppose, my natural disposition to
make fresh acquaintances, and to break with them so readily, although
always for a good reason, and never through mere fickleness. The errors
caused by temperament are not to be corrected, because our temperament is
perfectly independent of our strength