An ancient author tells us somewhere, with the tone of a pedagogue, if you have not done anything worthy of being recorded, at least write something worthy of being read.  It is a precept as beautiful as a diamond of the first water cut in England, but it cannot be applied to me, because I have not written either a novel, or the life of an illustrious character.  Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life.  I have lived without dreaming that I should ever take a fancy to write the history of my life, and, for that very reason, my Memoirs may claim from the reader an interest and a sympathy which they would not have obtained, had I always entertained the design to write them in my old age, and, still more, to publish them.

I have reached, in 1797, the age of three-score years and twelve; I can not say, Vixi, and I could not procure a more agreeable pastime than to relate my own adventures, and to cause pleasant laughter amongst the good company listening to me, from which I have received so many tokens of 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.