The Book of Montaigne 1 · Written in his tower, from his Essays
This man wrote his own book, so nothing here is another man’s record of him. He differs from the rest of this scripture: the others set down what they believed, and he sets down what he is. Where he contradicts himself he did not strike it out, and neither does this scripture.
1.1Reader, this is an honest book.
1.2I tell you at the outset: I wrote it for no other use than for myself and a few friends.
1.3I am not here to teach you anything. Had I meant to teach, I should have dressed myself up first.
1.4I have not dressed up. I am here as I am: careless, ordinary, faulty.
1.5The matter of this book is myself.
1.6Someone says: is that worth writing? What is there in one man to write about?
1.7I answer: how it is with others I do not know. I know this one, and I know him very insecurely.
1.8At forty I withdrew to the tower of my own house, meaning to let my mind settle and be left to itself.
1.9The opposite happened. It bolted like a horse off the rein, ran wilder than before, and bred all manner of strange things.
1.10So I began setting them down one by one, hoping that once written they might make themselves ashamed.
1.11That is where this book comes from. It is not learning. It is a set of accounts.
1.12I do not paint being. I paint passing.
1.13Not the passing from one year to seven, but from this minute to the next.
1.14So I contradict myself often. I do not correct it. Corrected, it would not be an account.