Michel de Montaigne

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne invented the literary form known as the essay — "essai," attempt — and used himself as the principal subject. Rather than building a system, he watched his own habits, moods, and shifts of thought and put them on the page. His method runs in a long line down to modern self-consciousness, psychology, and the psychological novel. "What do I know?" — Que sais-je? — was his life's question, and amid the wars of religion he held to tolerance and the middle ground.

He was born in 1533 to a wealthy noble family near Bordeaux. His humanist father had him raised entirely in Latin until age six, so the language of antiquity became his mother tongue. He studied law at Toulouse and became a magistrate at the Bordeaux parlement from 1554. In 1557 he met the humanist Etienne de la Boetie, and the friendship that followed reshaped his inner life. La Boetie's death at thirty-two in 1563 became a permanent presence in his thought.

In 1568 he inherited the chateau of Montaigne. In 1570, at thirty-seven, he resigned from the bench and retired to the third floor of the tower of his estate. He had fifty-eight inscriptions cut into the rafters of his study and dedicated his remaining life to letters. He began writing the Essais in 1572. Books I and II appeared in 1580, Book III with major additions in 1588, and he kept adding to the margins until his death.

His method overturned the conventions of philosophical writing. Classical quotations and personal observation alternated freely; topics ranged from sadness to thumbs to cannibals to the education of children; conclusions were often tentative; he frequently contradicted his earlier self. The driving question — what do I know? — was meant not to reach a system of truth but to map the limits of knowing. Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Seneca furnished his quotations; the Bible appeared rarely.

He lived through the Wars of Religion (1562-98). A Catholic, he served as gentleman-in-waiting to both the.