An open library of thought
Paint not being, but passage.
An essay is a trial: judgment is exercised on any subject, great or small, to discover its own strength and limits rather than to deliver a doctrine.
Montaigne tests his judgment on war horses, thumbs and smells as seriously as on death or friendship.
Montaigne’s motto, engraved with a pair of balanced scales on a medal of 1576, turns Pyrrhonian suspension of judgment into a question that keeps inquiry open.
Faced with conflicting reports of miracles or witchcraft, he prefers to withhold belief rather than condemn anyone on uncertain grounds.
Habit shapes what each people finds natural, reasonable or monstrous, so judgment must first recognize the force of custom before it can assess anything.
In Of Cannibals he observes that each of us calls barbarism whatever is not our own usage, and turns the charge back on European cruelty.
By painting himself in his changes rather than as a fixed essence, Montaigne shows that each person bears the whole form of the human condition.
In Of Repentance he writes that he does not portray being but passage, from day to day and from minute to minute.