sed force. One frequently encounters sceptical-minded
Catholics, full of the very spirit of Montaigne--who died in the
Catholic faith--but it is rare to meet a Protestant who is not, in a
most barbarous sense, full of dogmatic and argumentative "truth."

So uncivilised and unlovely is this controversial mood that
free-thinkers are often tempted to be unfair to the Reformation. This is a
fault; for after all it is something, even for ingrained sceptics
prepared to offer incense at any official altar, to be saved from the
persecuting alliance of church and state.

It is not pleasant to meet argumentative revivalists, and the Puritan
influence upon art and letters is no less than deadly; but it is better to
be teased with impertinent questions about one's soul than to be led
away to the stake for its salvation.

The mention of the situation, in which in spite of Shakespeare and
the rest poor modern sceptics still find themselves, is an indication
of how hopelessly illusive all talk of "progress" is. Between Calvin
on the one hand and the Sorbonne on the other, Montaigne might
well shuffle home from his municipal duties and read Horace in his
tower. And we, after three hundred odd years, have little better to do.

Heine, impish descendant of this great doubter, took refuge from
human madness at the feet of Venus in the Louvre. Machiavel--for
all his crafty wisdom--was driven back to his books and his
memories. Goethe built up the "pyramid of his existence" among
pictures and fossils and love affairs, leaving the making of history to
others, and keeping "religious truth" at a convenient distance.

This scepticism of Montaigne is a much rarer quality among men of
genius than the egoism with which it is so closely associated. I am
inclined to regard it as the sanest of all human moods. What
distinguishes it from other intellectual attitudes is the fact that it is
shared by the very loftiest with the very simplest minds. It is the
prevailing temper of shepherds and ploughmen, of carters and
herdsmen, of all honest gatherers at rustic taverns who discuss the
state of the crops, the prospects of the weather, the cattle market and
the rise and fall of nations. It is the wisdom of the earth itself;
shrewd, friendly, full of unaccountable instincts; obstinate and
capricious, given up to irrational and inexplicable superstitions;
sluggish, suspicious, cautious, hostile to theory, enamoured of
inconsistencies, humorously critical