2. MONTAIGNE
The other kind of essay, the literary form that has kept the original meaning of attempt, sketch, experiment, had its pace set late in the sixteenth century by Montaigne. Nothing could be farther removed than his habit from tidy system or consecutive argument. Devoted to the reading of history, and eager to share its profits, he had no mind to follow the Italian tradition of writing history. Essai in his practice is not the settling of a subject, but the trying. He makes one approach, then another, suggesting relations that he does not carry out. With many exempla he invites us to accumulate philosophy of living. If we do not coöperate, if we do not think them over, his essays remain collections of items in memorable phrase, without compelling sequence of ideas. For Montaigne is not the kind of philosopher who integrates a system; he is a sage. He has the sage’s oral habit. No writing conveys more the impression of thinking aloud. Again and again he writes as if making up his mind, not before utterance, but by the very process of utterance. Macchiavelli, or Bodin, having made up his mind fully and finally, tries to convince us; Montaigne, as if making up his in our company, throws out suggestions.
True, some few of his essays are more consecutive developments of what he has concluded. His early and widely quoted Education of Children (II. xxvi) has even some logical progress.
But logical sequence is not Montaigne’s habit. His many revisions[89] show him leaning more and more on the aggregation of separate suggestions. He changes words, he adds instances, but he does not seek a stricter order.
But I am going off a little to the left of my theme.... I, who take more pains with the weight and usefulness of my discourses than with their order and sequence, need not fear to lodge here, a little off the track, a fine story (II. xxvii).
This bundling of so many various pieces is made on condition that I put hand to it only when urged by too lax a leisure, and only when I am at home (II. xxxvii, opening).
His usual lack of sequence, then, is not careless. The careless fumbling that comes from muddled thinking he ridicules.
They themselves do not yet know what they mean, and you see them stammer in bringing it forth, and judge that their labor is not in childbirth, but in conception, and that they are only licking what is not yet formed (I. xxvi).
As to sequence he even catechizes himself.