_J'ai vecu_, as I apprehend most of us manage to
exist, missing all along the varied forms of destruction by a
hair's-breadth, saving my body, that's clear, and perhaps my soul also,
but not without some damage here and there to the fine edge of my
conscience, that heirloom of the ages, of the race, of the group, of the
family, colourable and plastic, fashioned by the words, the looks, the
acts, and even by the silences and abstentions surrounding one's
childhood; tinged in a complete scheme of delicate shades
and crude colours by the inherited traditions, beliefs, or
prejudices--unaccountable, despotic, persuasive, and often,
in its texture, romantic.
And often romantic! . . . The matter in hand, however, is to keep these
reminiscences from turning into confessions, a form of literary
activity discredited by Jean Jacques Rousseau on account of the extreme
thoroughness he brought to the work of justifying his own existence;
for that such was his purpose is palpably, even grossly, visible to
an unprejudiced eye. But then, you see, the man was not a writer of
fiction. He was an artless moralist, as is clearly demonstrated by his
anniversaries being celebrated with marked emphasis by the heirs of
the French Revolution, which was not a political movement at all, but
a great outburst of morality.
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