 Individualism, a Reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. Four. Of Preparation. Michel de Montaigne. The Essays of Montaigne, translated by E. J. Treckman, New York Oxford University Press, 1927. Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592, was a French nobleman and statesman who retreated to private life during the French wars of religion. Montaigne is credited with refining the literary form of the essay with its emphasis on self-reflection and individualism. His essays depict a man with profound psychological insight and a liberal temperament. Montaigne published the essays in three volumes between 1580 and 1588. In the passage excerpted here, Montaigne discusses the importance of knowing oneself. For many years now, my thoughts have had no other aim but myself. I have studied and examined myself only, and if I study any other things, it is to apply them immediately to, or rather within, myself. And I do not think I go wrong if, as is done in other incomparably less profitable sciences, I communicate what I have learned in this one, although I am not very well satisfied with the progress I have made therein. There is no description equal in difficulty to a description of oneself and certainly none in profitableness. Besides, a man must curl his hair, he must trim and pull himself together to appear in public. Now I am continually doing myself up, for I am continually describing myself. Custom has made it a fault to speak of oneself and obstinately forbids it in hatred of the boasting which always seems to attach to self-testimony. Instead of wiping a child's nose, that is called cutting it off. How often we in eagerness to shun one fault are apt into a worse to run. Horace. To me there seems to be more harm than good in this remedy, but though it were true that to talk to people about ourselves is necessarily a presumption, I must not whilst pursuing my general plan forbear an action which makes public this morbid peculiarity since it is in me. I ought not to conceal this fault which I not only practice but profess. At all events, to speak my mind freely, it is the same wrong opinion that condemns wine because some get drunk with it. Only the things that are good can be abused, and I believe that this rule only concerns the popular failing. Such rules are bridles for calves with which neither saints who speak so highly of themselves nor philosophers nor theologians will curb themselves. Nor will I, though I am as little the one as the other. If they do not expressly write about themselves at all events when the occasion arises, they do not hesitate to push themselves forward into the highest seats. Of what does Socrates treat more largely than himself? What does he make his disciples talk about more often than themselves, not the lessons of their book, but the essence and motions of their soul? We devoutly confess to God and our confessor as our neighbors due to the whole people, but I may be answered we confess only our sins. Then we confess all, for our very virtue is faulty and repentable. My trade and art is to live. He who forbids me to speak of it, according to my understanding, experience and habit, may as well expect an architect to speak of buildings not as he himself regards them, but as his neighbor does, not from his own knowledge but from another's. If it is vain glory for a man spontaneously to cry out his own virtues, why does not Cicero commend the eloquence of Hortensius and Hortensius that of Cicero? Perhaps they would rather I gave testimony of myself by words and deeds, not merely by words. I chiefly paint my thoughts a shapeless subject and incapable of being translated into acts. It is all I can do to couch it in this airy body of the voice. Wiser men and more devout have lived and avoided all conspicuous actions. My actions would be rather the result of chance than a reflection of my soul. They testify to the part they play, not to the part I play, unless it be conjecturally and uncertainly, samples which show off only the details. I exhibit myself entire. It is a skeleton on which, at one view, appear the veins, the muscles, and the tendons, each in its own place. One part is brought into evidence by a cough, another by pallor or palpitation of the heart, and that dubiously. It is not my deeds that I write of. It is myself. It is my essence. I am of opinion that we should be cautious in forming an estimate of ourselves and equally conscientious in expressing it impartially whether it be high or low. If I thought myself good or wise or nearly so, I should shout it at the top of my voice. To make ourselves out worse than we are is foolishness, not modesty. To be content with less than we are worth is want of spirit and pusillanimity, according to Aristotle. No virtue is helped by falsehood, and the truth is never subject to error. To declare ourselves better than we are is not always presumption, it too is often foolishness. To be inordinately pleased with oneself, to be inconsiderately in love with oneself is, in my opinion, the substance of this error. The supreme remedy for curing it is to do the very opposite of what they enjoin who by forbidding us to speak of ourselves consequently still more forbid us to think of ourselves. Pride lies in thought. The tongue can have only a very small share in it. They imagine that to muse on oneself is to be pleased with oneself, that to associate and converse with oneself is to hold oneself to dear. That may be, but this excess is only bred in those who touch only on their surface, who view themselves according to their circumstances, who call it dreaming and idleness to commune with themselves and regard the building up and furnishing of one's mind as a mere building of castles in Spain, looking upon themselves as a third person and a stranger. If any man looking down on those beneath him is intoxicated with his own knowledge, let him turn his eyes upward to the past ages and he will lower his horns, for there he will find so many thousands of minds that will tread him underfoot. If he entertain any flattering conceit of his own worth, let him remember the lives of the two Scipios and the many armies and nations that leave him so far behind them. No particular virtue will put pride into the heart of him who will at the same time take account of the many other feeble and imperfect qualities that are in him, ending up with the nothingness of man's estate. Because Socrates alone had honestly bitten into that precept of his god, know thyself, and had by that study come to despise himself, he alone was thought to deserve the title of sage. Whoever shall so know himself, let him boldly make himself known by his own mouth. This has been Individualism, a Reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. Copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute. Production copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute.