Living Thoughts of Montaigne

MONTAIGNE
"To Pilate's cruel question which re-echoes down the ages, Montaigne seems to have assumed, though in a quite human and profane manner, and in a very different sense, Christ's divine answer: 'I am the truth.' That is to say, he thinks he can know nothing truly but himself. This is what makes him talk so much about himself; for the knowledge of self seems to him indeed as important as any other. 'The mask,' he says, 'must be well taken from things as from men.' (Bk.I.,ch.19.)
He paints himself in order to unmask himself. And as the mask belongs much more to the country and the period than to the man himself, it is above all by the mask that people differ, so that in the being that is really unmasked it is easy to recognize our own likeness."
Anrdé Gide