ECT GROUP of writers who are one, at whatever age or stage of espeare, Goethe, Balzac, Tolstoy— se whose significance is not prop- |a particular moment. Montaigne is one ‘to recognize his true worth, you should isely a generation like ours, cast ract of the world’s turmoil, to whom tency of his thought conveys the he whose soul is in turmoil, en the life of every individual, and ce in that life, the freedom of w much courage, sincerity and to remain faithful to his inner self in d’s rampancy. Only he knows that burdensome and difficult than tual and moral independenceted himself cay ie, and I count twenty I picked rable book he left t to do with it. Of literary, like que; it lacked d on the whole soul. Of what twentieth Re eR EEE SR EET EEEMONTAIGNE by time and lost in the riddles ld his gentle and insistent call for for tolerance, have on a hot-headed youth mt to be dispirited, who did not care for e _ who, without even being aware, 0 be inflamed by the vital effusion of asm? Itis the business of youth to recoil | of gentleness, of scepticism. Doubt for a youth has need of faith and : rein to the impetuosity borne within. radical, the most absurd illusions, fl would in his eyes have more 1¢ most profound wisdom, which of his will. ore, this freedom, of which Montaigne d herald: did one really need to defend cy, now, in 1900? Surely, for so long taken for granted—had been _ 4vorld unfurled were neither 1e discoveryMONTAIGNE most crucial struggle of the spirit, own life. We too need to stand the ne of the most horrifying collapses of follows directly one of its most mag- advancement. We too are to be torn from our experiences, our expectations jiasms, chased out from them as if under have only our naked selves left to being which is irreplaceable. It was made us brothers that Montaigne et his consolation, his irreplaceable does his fate seem so very similar n Michel de Montaigne made his entry great hope was beginning to die, the 1 experienced at the opening of our enabled its artists, painters, thinkers, reach a level of perfection none had no, centuries were opening up er, step by step, wave on wave, was fic existence towards the threshold nce the world had become vaster, 4lbeginning invented, € means to soar, shores, new s of com- hen, onceMONTAIGNE, creased in grandiose fashion thanks to ne ether by flight, thanks to physics, . As science drew from nature her another and revealed those secrets in an inexpressible hope animated a n wave climbs too high and too nore violently, like a cataract. And e miracles of technology have 4 horrific elements of destruc- the Renaissance and humanism d to offer salvation proved a lethal n, which dreamt of bringing to n spirit, provoked unrestrained rs of religion; the printing press re but furor theologicus;’ instead of lerance that spread. Across the murderous civil war devastated each led to unparalleled cruelty. The and Michelangelo, of Diirer and aMONTAIGNE, urnt, half-putrefied flesh of the victims. °s of the martyred and cannot escape nt flesh wafting through the streets. childhood behind when war breaks o the fanaticism of the opposing forces, as completely as today socialist brings devastation to all four yorld. The Chambre Ardente sends ) the stake, the St Bartholomew’s Day for like: they assault the churches, . Even the dead are not left in peace bands: the tombs of Richard the olics, sometimes Huguenots, but | against Frenchman, citizen against qMONTAIGNE, in store for us in this hour! Beneath lies a wasteland, and I see no of action than exile, to abandon my yhe fate decrees. For long now gods has exhorted me to flee and ‘vast and free lands across the ocean. dawn of our century this new world the floods, it was as if the gods had the refuge where men could freely re the highest values of life—our , our basic rights, all that makes pure, more beautiful, all that justi- d to the demon inhabiting a dozen gues, all the problems of the man who ‘ity come down to the same question: How to preserve the incorruptible faced with all the threats and dangersanity intact in the tyrannica| to impose onsonra | ‘so as to establish whether he was a in, an Epicurean or a Stoic, a philoso- tiner, a writer or merely a dilettante of of education and religion were ed in a raft of theses and doctor- ns relevant now and occupies my today is this: how, in a time so m, did he liberate himself inwardly 1im, can we fortify ourselves by his see the ancestor, the protector and libre” on earth, the most adept yet eternal science, the preserving a ler concerns. Few men on earth ‘ithfulness and tenacity to selves, their “essences”, from es, and fewer still have managed in which they lived, and for all gle that in his case was surely wre determined than that of any | nothing heroic or sententious justice to include Montaignendence at the defensive,MONTAIGNE. who discreetly paid his dues to the itourage, he assumed the mask of self- as to bloom inside himself, wondering the play of different colours over his at every moment disposed to lend, never s, whatever his mode of living, he kept the most authentic and most subtle He left the rest to prattle on, to d, to get borne aloft, to preach and world to follow its chaotic crazed himself with one thing: to be elf, to remain human in an inhuman the vortex of pandemonium. He y, those who mockingly accused cision and cowardice; he let e at seeing him relinquish His nearest and dearest, who bted the perseverance, the 1e subtlety with which, in the he applied himself to the sole he had accomplished an himself and articulatingthe human uman being. And Page after n to Montaigne a and another is hands, this o whom I am me, a mati me. When olves in the es, someone me, and now he e, a friend. Four ‘not the Seigneu" at “gentilhommMONTAIGNE, ” of a now-vanished king of France, the érigord, who left behind the white folded ted hat, the sword, who withdrew from his chain of the Order of St Michael. This is a friend who has come, to counsel 1 Sometimes his voice reveals an melancholy which pierces the fragility of dition, the deficiency in our reason, the e views of our leaders, the absurdity ‘of our epoch, the noble sorrow that knew how to articulate in such nanner, through characters so dear to spero. Soon, however, I glimpse hy take all that pandemonium so self be so torn and traumatized All of that can only graze your he interior self. The outside world you and cannot unhinge you, as yourself to be disturbed. The impotent before you, as long in them, and the madness ofencouragement of confusion he uttered for those who "we owe our is the sense of rs, those who ht, what we