My mother’s circumstances were more affluent she was daughter of a Mons. My father’s share of a moderate competency, which was divided among fifteen children, being very trivial, his business of a watchmaker (in which he had the reputation of great ingenuity) was his only dependence. I was born at Geneva, in 1712, son of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah Bernard, citizens. Such as I was, I have declared myself sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous, and sublime even as Thou hast read my inmost soul: Power Eternal! assemble round Thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and if he dare, aver, I was better than that man. » With equal freedom and veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no crimes, added no virtues and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory: I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. I will present myself, whenever the last trumpet shall sound, before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, « Thus have I acted these were my thoughts such was I. I have studied mankind and know my heart I am not made like any one I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence if not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mold in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read. I propose to set before my fellow-mortals a man in all the truth of nature and this man shall be myself. I HAVE begun on a work which is without precedent, whose accomplishment will have no imitator.
0 kommentar(er)
