should smile at these things; but,
imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special
righteousness awakens in me that scorn and danger from which a
philosophical mind should be free....

I fear that trying to be conversational I have only managed to be unduly
discursive. I have never been very well acquainted with the art of
conversation--that art which, I understand, is supposed to be lost now.
My young days, the days when one's habits and character are formed, have
been rather familiar with long silences. Such voices as broke into them
were anything but conversational. No. I haven't got the habit. Yet this
discursiveness is not so irrelevant to the handful of pages which
follow. They, too, have been charged with discursiveness, with disregard
of chronological order (which is in itself a crime) with
unconventionality of form (which is an impropriety). I was told severely
that the public would view with displeasure the informal character of my
recollections. "Alas!" I protested, mildly. "Could I begin with the
sacramental words, 'I was born on such a date in such a place'? The
remoteness of the locality would have robbed the statement of all
interest. I haven't lived through wonderful adventures to be related
_seriatim_. I haven't known distinguished men on whom I could pass
fatuous remarks. I haven't been mixed up with great or scandalous
affairs. This is but a bit of psychological document, and even so, I
haven't written it with a view to put forward any conclusion of my own."

But my objector was not placated. These were good reasons for not
writing at all--not a defence of what stood written already, he said.

I admit that almost anything, anything in the world, would serve as a
good reason for not writing at all. But since I have written them, all I
want to say in their defence is that these memories put down without any
regard for established conventions have not been thrown off without
system and purpose. They have their hope and their aim. The hope that
from the reading of these pages there may emerge at last the vision of a
personality; the man behind the books so fundamentally dissimilar as,
for instance, "Almayer's Folly" and "The Secret Agent," and yet a
coherent, justifiable personality both in its origin and in its action.
This is the hope. The immediate aim, closely associated with the hope,
is to give the record of personal memories by presenting faithfully the
feelings and sensations