________________
THE MEMOIRS OF A CAT
any relation with my insignificant existence, just as I have found thein to be. Naturally, mine will not be a dispassionate narrative. I am not going to compose an essay on myself. I am going to record the incidents of my life.
Passion is the sign of life. To be passionless, is to be lifeless. If I did not live, there would be no story to tell. Anybody who proposes to write an autobiography dispassionately is to be pitied for self-ileception. It is lying to one's own self. What is life but a sum total of hunger, love, hatred, anger, kindness? My relation with men has been determined by one or the other of such passions. My judgment of a man could not be humanly (if I may borrow the term) free from harshness, if he treated me unkindly when I was hungry. And such treatment reveals the real character of man. Having had the opportunity of observing man in his unguarded moments, and in conditions of jail life which force the beast in man to show its teeth, I claim my judgment to be objective. But objectivity does not exclude passion. Objectivity simply means correspondence with reality ; and passion is the basic reality of life.
I justify my undertaking on the authority of one of the most successful scribes of our time. I mean, Bernard Shaw. I start with a similar modesty, and expect to be more successful. I expect to succeed not as an artist, but as a social critic. Literary talent contributed to Shaw's melancholy
