# Montaigne’s Essais: Inventing a Form to Think In

Literature I · Great Works of World Literature · https://tryals.app/learn/literature-i/montaignes-essais-inventing-a-form-to-think-in

## The Attempt

Montaigne published the *Essais* in 1580 and kept writing them until his death in 1592. The title is the argument. *Essayer* means **to attempt, to try, to assay**: as one assays a metal to find out what it is. An essai is not a demonstration of a conclusion already reached but a **trial of a thought**, conducted in public and permitted to fail.

The scale is worth having in mind: **107 essays across three books**, averaging around thirty-six to a book, and ranging from a page to the two-hundred-page "Apology for Raymond Sebond".

The composition method is the genuinely radical part. Montaigne revised by **adding, never deleting**. Scholars label the layers:

| Layer | Edition | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| **A** | 1580 | The original text |
| **B** | 1588 | Additions, plus a whole third book |
| **C** | 1592/1595 | Final marginal additions, posthumous |

Because nothing was removed, a single page can carry a claim from 1580 and its own qualification from 1588 sitting side by side, unresolved. Montaigne is explicit: "I do not portray being, I portray passing." A reader is watching a mind revise itself over twelve years, with the earlier position still legible underneath.

The subject is announced with a directness that startled his contemporaries: *"I am myself the matter of my book."* This is not vanity. His wager is that examining one ordinary person closely enough reaches what is common, "each man bears the entire form of the human condition", so the particular becomes the route to the general, rather than an obstacle to it.

The style follows from the method. Digression is not a failure of organisation but the point: an essay on coaches begins with coaches and arrives at the conquest of the New World, because that is how a mind actually moves. **"Que sais-je?"**, What do I know?, is the motto, and the scepticism is practical rather than despairing. It is a working assumption that lets him take a position without pretending to have settled it.

The form he made proved unreasonably durable. Bacon borrowed it immediately in English, and the essay is still the default shape of serious non-fiction four hundred years later.

> **Common pitfall:** reading the digressions as padding, or the contradictions as sloppiness. Both are consequences of a deliberate method: nothing is deleted, so the record of thinking stays visible, and the wandering is a claim about how thought works.

## Practice questions

8 of this lesson's 11 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Montaigne revised the Essais by adding new material without deleting what he had already written.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True**, and it is the book’s most radical feature. The 1580, 1588 and posthumous layers all remain, so a claim and its later qualification can sit side by side unresolved. "I do not portray being, I portray passing."

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### 2. Complete the account of Montaigne’s method and its motto.

**Answer:** The verb *essayer* means to **attempt**, as one assays a metal. Montaigne announces that he is himself the **matter** of his book, wagering that each man bears the entire form of the human **condition**. His motto, "Que sais-je?", makes scepticism a working **assumption** rather than a despair.

**Why:** The chain is the whole argument: an attempt rather than a proof, the self as material rather than as boast, and doubt as a working method. "Que sais-je?" lets him hold a position without pretending it is settled.

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### 3. Sort each feature of the Essais by whether it follows from Montaigne’s METHOD or describes his SUBJECT.

**Answer:**

- Follows from the method: A claim from 1580 sits beside its 1588 qualification, An essay on coaches arrives at the New World, Nothing already written was ever deleted
- Describes the subject: "I am myself the matter of my book", His own fears, habits and changes of mind

**Why:** The two are connected: because the subject is a mind in motion, a method that froze it into a single position would misrepresent it. Never deleting is the formal consequence of claiming to portray passing rather than being.

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### 4. Montaigne treats his own life not as exemplary biography, but as an assay of human nature. Why does he place the self at the centre of his philosophical enquiry?

A. A single life provides a path to what all people share
B. An exemplary life offers models for readers to imitate
C. Introspection is the only form of truth immune to doubt
D. Personal history serves to demonstrate settled conclusions

**Answer:** A. A single life provides a path to what all people share

**Why:** Montaigne rejects exemplary moralising and dogmatic certainty; he assays himself because the specific human instance contains the universal condition, making self-scrutiny an open trial rather than a proof of virtue.

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### 5. In which year did Montaigne first publish the Essais?

**Answer:** 1580

**Why:** **1580**, with two books. The third book and extensive additions came in 1588, and the final marginal additions were published after his death in 1592, a twelve-year composition that the finished text does not hide.

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### 6. How does Montaigne’s "add, never delete" method change the book a reader finally holds? Select every effect that follows.

A. Contradictions remain visible on the page
B. The final text is shorter than the first edition
C. The book records the process of thinking, not only its results
D. Scholars can date individual passages by layer

**Answer:** A. Contradictions remain visible on the page; C. The book records the process of thinking, not only its results; D. Scholars can date individual passages by layer

**Why:** Only addition means the text can only grow, so the second option is impossible. The other three are exactly what the method was for: the process stays visible, contradictions are preserved rather than tidied, and the layers remain separable centuries later.

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### 7. Montaigne’s digressions are best understood as a failure to organise his material.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** The digression is a claim about how thought actually moves. Montaigne follows an association because the mind does, and the resulting shape is the argument, a tidily organised essay would assert a control over thinking that he denies having.

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### 8. How many essays does the collection contain across its three books?

**Answer:** 107

**Why:** **107**. The number matters less than the spread: from a single page to the enormous "Apology for Raymond Sebond", the collection includes pieces that would now be a note and pieces that would now be a book.

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