Excerpt from The Life-Work of Montaigne, From the Russian of Merejkowski

In this detailed psychological self - analysis lies the whole philosophy of Montaigne. It has indeed all the elements of a harmonious system, if not metaphysical, at any rate social and aesthetic in character; there is full and marvellously finished material for a splendid structure. But Montaigne nourishes a deep dislike for superfluous symmetry he is over fond of what is natural and unscientific. He prefers to leave the material of his thought in that undisturbed form in which he has received it from the hands of Nature and of Life. One may compare the Essays of Montaigne to a densely tangled forest, overgrown and wildly beautiful, wherein oneroaming would easily go astray. Line and colour, the play of light and shade, the forms of plants and flowers, the song of birds, all here are natural, unruly and subject to no ordered law. At sight of these mighty trees intermingling their branches, the mind of a philosopher-builder would be no doubt beset with all manner of prac tical suggestions: it would be well to cut down these trees, and saw them into planks or beams and then, in accordance with all the rules of architectural science, build up the symmetrical structure of a metaphysical system, where all is clear and requires no explanation, where there is no possibility of going astray. But Montaigne has chosen a dense wood, uncleared by paths or glades. Instinctively he feels that behind this outward disorder and lack of harmony there is concealed another and higher har mony and sense of unity. He has realised that the flowing of the sap through the blades of grass, the branching of the roots, the formation of a leaf - in a word, all the un conscious natural processes of organic de veiopment are sometimes more perfect than the work of the subtlest and most complicatedinstruments of men. It is impossible to enter the structure of his point of view without doing it some injury, without spoiling the cement and soldering which are essential to all such edifices. One can only name the chief constructive elements of his philosophy or define the chief species of the innumerable plants and flowers which are to be met with in his wood. And it is as well to give warn ing beforehand that it is impossible to convey the wsthetic impression of this wood with any justice.

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