The best thing this essay has going for it is the title. It’s evocative and highly relatable. Who hasn’t struggled with a tangled mind when faced with difficult decisions or the complexities of life? The title promises insight, maybe even clarity—but Montaigne, true to form, delivers something far more elusive and, ultimately, profound.
But most of those insights come later in his project. In this very short essay, Montaigne provides just a bit of what the title promises. In fact, the essay might be better entitled “an additional something.” Here’s why:
It seems to me that we could say that nothing ever presents itself to us in which there is not some difference, however slight: either to sight or to touch there is always an additional something which attracts us even though we may not perceive it.
So, while Montaigne is chiding the stoics in this essay for formulating a series of rules that are supposed to help us reach decisions, he’s more broadly taking on the notion that reason alone can help us understand the world. Reason, Montaigne is saying, will often take us to a location where the decision is 50/50. And when we decide, it will be because of that “additional something,” not some final piece of rational evidence that tips it.
Montaigne’s “additional something” isn’t just an acknowledgment of the gaps in rationality—it’s a reminder of the unseen forces that shape our lives. Whether we call it intuition, bias, or the unconscious, this “something” operates in the background, quietly deciding when logic cannot. Montaigne’s insight, radical for his time, aligns with modern neuroscience, which suggests that many decisions are made before we’re even consciously aware of them.
This “additional something” reminds us of the limits of human perception—how our understanding of the world and ourselves is always mediated by forces we can’t fully see or explain. Montaigne seems to say that even when reason brings us to the edge of certainty, it’s the ineffable, the unnoticed, that tips the scales.
That’s really all there is to this essay, but Montaigne doesn’t just let the matter drop, he eventually reveals significant insights, going into much greater depth about the same topic in his closing essay On Experience.
This essay could be read as a precursor to On Experience in its critique of logic and its celebration of the messy, dynamic nature of life. Both essays reflect Montaigne’s deep skepticism about the capacity of abstract systems to capture the complexity of human existence. Instead, they affirm the value of experience, perception, and the acceptance of uncertainty as the foundations of wisdom.
In On Experience, Montaigne builds on the skepticism of this essay by arguing that logic and reason are inherently entangled in the flaws of the human mind. He observes that we often overcomplicate our understanding by attempting to rationalize everything, likening our mental efforts to silkworms entangling themselves in their own webs. This critique of logic as overreaching aligns with his view in How Our Mind Tangles Itself Up, where he suggests that human understanding often creates more confusion than clarity.
Montaigne wrote his essays with “my reader” in mind—a concept that starts off as a generic dedication, but takes on different weight when considering the past influence of Etienne de La Boetie and the future assistance of Marie de Gournay. This essay has taken on a similar life of its own in that manner, although I have never received the kind of directed assistance he received.
There is nothing more distinctly human that looking for patterns in everything, from lights in the sky, to soap bubbles, to random bits of internet noise. I could chide myself for this, but Montaigne reminds us that trying to find meaning and direct purpose in our lives is often beyond our strength of will:
There is nothing certain except that nothing is certain, and nothing more wretched than Man nor more arrogant.
Montaigne’s closing thought from Pliny serves as a reminder that uncertainty is not just inevitable but deeply human. Perhaps it’s this very uncertainty—this silent trust in an “additional something”—that keeps us moving forward, weaving meaning out of the tangled threads of our lives.
Leave a Reply