This is the first essay in the series that feels like Montaigne. Consequently, it’s impossible to describe without recapping or rewriting, and there’s no point in that — it’s much more interesting and fun to read Montaigne being Montaigne. He digresses here from a brief discussion about anxiety about the future to becoming aware of what you do best and being content with his station in life. He doesn’t stop to juxtapose those two subjects, he leaves it to us to pull out his meaning.
And he has so much more of that to do here, from a discussion of how much respect we owe leaders, to many thoughts about people as they prepare for death and then insist the living take certain actions after their death. This is also the first essay where Montaigne raises the question of whether a person can be considered happy before death. If we are forever in a state of becoming during life, how can we be called anything solidly and in particular?
If it seems like I’m just teasing issues instead of observing them, that’s because Montaigne doesn’t go into any depth here either. But his examination of power and how much we owe leaders is worth paying attention to, because Montaigne goes out on a limb, with subtlety, by praising critics of Nero while the bloodthirsty despot was still alive. He moves on quickly, not wanting to dwell on the topic, but the subject is broached and will come up in other forms later.
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