Essays

MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE (1533-1592), French moralist and essayist. He is generally regarded as the inventor of the modern essay. The first two books of his “Essais” appeared in 1580; the fifth edition, containing the third book, appeared in 1588. Each successive version containing extensive additions to the existing material. The “Essais” are held to exhibit three stages of development, leading from an early Stoicism, under the influence of Seneca, to a philosophical scepticism (Apologie de Raimond Sebond), and finally to a moderate Epicureanism. The Apologie, his most sustained piece, is a comprehensive attack on reason as a source of presumption in man, and its challenge was taken up by a number of later thinkers, including Descartes, Pascal and F. Bacon.