The source of the problem, just as in the seventeenth century, was a distaste for his Scepticism. Nineteenth-century readers were disturbed by it in a way few had been since Pascal. They did not mind Montaigne doubting facts, but they did not like him applying Scepticism to everyday life and showing emotional detachment from agreed standards. The Sceptic epokhe, or ‘I hold back’,21 seemed to show an untrustworthiness in his nature. It sounded very much like the greatest bugbear of the new era: nihilism.
