It is easier to forgive an author for not replying to the questions we ask ourselves than to treat as important those which do not concern us and which should in reality interest everybody. It is a proof of our own poverty of thought. Montaigne always offers us more than he announces. He is one of those writers like a Freud or a Proust from whom we may always hope for some unexpected observation, who always fill their nets all the more abundantly because they do not ask themselves in advance what principles they are going to rely upon in order to establish a connection between all the material they bring to the surface, or how they are going to reconcile it with some pre-existing explanation or moral attitude.