This led Voltaire to rush to the defense of Pascal’s “great adversary”: What a delightful design Montaigne had to portray himself without artifice as he did! For he has portrayed human nature itself. And what a paltry project of … Pascal, to belittle Montaigne! Voltaire was much more at home with a credo like Montaigne’s, as it appears in the final chapter of the Essays: I accept with all my heart and with gratitude what nature has done for me, and I am pleased with myself and proud of myself that I do. We wrong that great and all-powerful Giver by refusing his gift, nullifying it, and
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