Isaac Rousseau

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 a better than that man." I was born at Geneva in seventeen twelve, son of Isaac Rousseau and Susanna Bernard, citizens.

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.

My mother’s circumstances were more affluent.