LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD
1917
First published, December 1916.
Reprinted, January, June 1917.
The Confessions of St. Augustine are the first autobiography, and theyhave this to distinguish them from all other autobiographies, that theyare addressed directly to God. Rousseau's unburdening of himself is thelast, most effectual manifestation of that nervous, defiantconsciousness of other people which haunted him all his life. He feltthat all the men and women whom he passed on his way through the worldwere at watch upon him, and mostly with no very favourable intentions.The exasperation of all those eyes fixed upon him, the absorbing, theprotesting self-consciousness which they called forth in him, drove him,in spite of himself, to set about explaining himself to other people, tothe world in general. His anxiety to explain, not to justify, himselfwas after all a kind of cowardice before his own conscience. He[Pg 2] feltthe silent voices within him too acutely to keep silence. Cellini wrotehis autobiography because he heard within him such trumpeting voices ofpraise, exultation, and the supreme satisfaction of a violent man whohas conceived himself to be always in the right, that it shocked him tothink of going down into his grave without having made the whole worldhear those voices. He hurls at you this book of his own deeds that itma