Today is the birthday of maître. No subservience – probably a bit of kotowing to the West, as the person in question was the mayor of Bordeaux. This man was not a great experimentalist, but gained fame due to Essays. Put word essays in quotation marks, and you will immediately guess the name of this philosopher whom Pascal and La Rochefoucauld, Moliere and Shakespeare, Pushkin, etc. regarded with reverence.

Michel de Montaigne was born on February 28, 1533 in the castle bearing his name, not far from Bordeaux, the city he later became the mayor of. However, it was not his mission in life. His life’s work was Essays. The first essayist in the world and remarkable philosopher-humanist of the Renaissance could boast of brilliant education and was on friendly terms with many of his outstanding contemporaries. Having got educated, Montaigne locked himself in his ancestral castle and started pondering over nature, people and knowledge. Here are some fruit of his meditation: “Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.” “One has to learn a lot to realize that he knows little.” And the most important conclusion from what has been read: the fairest distribution in the world is the one of reason, as nobody complains about the lack of it.