He was not the only writer of his time to oppose either hunting or torture. What is unusual in Montaigne is his reason for it: his visceral rapport with others. When speaking to the Brazilian Indians in Rouen, he was struck by how they spoke of men as halves of one another, wondering at the sight of rich Frenchmen gorging themselves while their ‘other halves’ starved on their doorstep. For Montaigne, all humans share an element of their being, and so do all other living things. ‘It is one and the same nature25 that rolls its course.’ Even if animals were less similar to us than they are, we
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