If one reverses chronology and imagines Montaigne settling down in his armchair to read Rousseau, it is intriguing to wonder how far he would have followed this before tossing the book from him. In the early stages of this passage, he might have felt enchanted: here was a writer with whom he was in perfect harmony. A few paragraphs later, one imagines him faltering and frowning. ‘Though I don’t know …’ he might murmur, as the wave of Rousseau’s rhetoric keeps swelling. Montaigne would want to pause and examine it all from alternative angles. Does society really make us callous? he would ask.
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