Montaigne and Human Nature

(Michel de Montaigne, French essayist, 1533-1592) Once a day I sit discharging my humanity, staring dumbly at the floor or browsing magazines. Montaigne would have thought it an act as natural as any other demanded by our human nature. Later, alone in his tower, surrounded by an antiquity of books and writers – all closer than family or friends –he would think it just as natural to essay comely words on the subject, giving matter-of-fact, unblushing articulation to what, after all, was, at bottom, purely human.