kept. I know a little what it is, and how few
people understand it. No human science can keep it. Saint Thomas did not
keep it. Mathematics keep it, but they are useless on account of their
depth.
62. Preface to the first part.--To speak of those who have treated of the
knowledge of self; of the divisions of Charron, which sadden and weary us;
of the confusion of Montaigne; that he was quite aware of his want of
method
and shunned it by jumping from subject to subject; that he sought to be
fa****onable.
His foolish project of describing himself! And this not casually and
against
his maxims, since every one makes mistakes, but by his maxims themselves,
and by first and chief design. For to say silly things by chance and
weakness is a common misfortune, but to say them intentionally is
intolerable, and to say such as that...
63. Montaigne.--Montaigne's faults are great. Lewd words; this is bad,
notwithstanding Mademoiselle de Gournay. Credulous; people without eyes.
Ignorant; squaring the circle, a greater world. His opinions on suicide,
on
death. He suggests an indifference about salvation, without fear and
without
repentance. As his book was not written with a religious purpose, he was
not
bound to mention religion; but it is always our duty not to turn men from
it. One can excuse his rather free and licentious opinions on some
relations
of life; but one cannot excuse his thoroughly pagan views on death, for a
man must renounce piety altogether, if he does not at least wish to die
like
a Christian. Now, through the whole of his book his only conception of
death
is a cowardly and effeminate one.
64. It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in
him.
65. What good there is in Montaigne can only have been acquired with
difficulty. The evil that is in him, I mean apart from his morality, could
have been corrected in a moment
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