“Everyone is well or ill at ease, according as he so finds himself; not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in this alone belief gives itself being and reality.”

(Note the second part of this review can be found here)

Michel de Montaigne is perhaps best known not for his own works, but for his influence on other writers, including Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Emerson, Nietzsche, Balzac, Asimov, Shakespeare, and perhaps most recently, Taleb. He popularized the essay as a literary genre, and was one of the first authors to combine serious analysis with personal anecdotes, but as well as a writer he was a statesman, classicist, and skeptic.

Some of his works will ring oddly to modern ears, perhaps particularly his views on women and the need for obedience to authority, but in other ways he has much in common with modern viewpoints, including his dismissal of contemporary criticisms of the native peoples of North America as barbaric, arguing that cultures tend to assume everything different from themselves is barbaric without seeking to understand.

His essays vary from wide-ranging discussions on death, friendship, and education to narrow treatises on whether a commander should go to a parley in person or why we wear clothes. It is a book that relies purely on the judgment of the author, and in that respect he is actually more accessible to the modern reader than most of his contemporaries. For myself, I liked some of his essays and disliked others, but the good ones are very good, and even the poor ones are worth reading; agree or disagree, he has put considerable thought into his perspectives, and draws upon centuries of history to support them.

Next week, I’ll focus on his essays on Death and Education, but in the meantime here are some some samples of his thought:

“Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.”

“I, for my part, am very little subject to these violent passions; I am naturally of a stubborn apprehensions, which also, by reasoning, I every day harden and fortify.”

“I have lived in good company enough to know the formalities of our own nation, and am able to give lessons in it. I love to follow them, but not to be so servilely tied to their observation that my whole life should be enslaved to ceremonies, of which there are some so troublesome that, provided a man omits them out of discretion, and not for want of breeding, it will be every whit as handsome.”

You can pick up your copy of the Essays here (or in the UK or Canada). Or, if you’ve got a kindle, the essays are often cheap or free!