Montaigne's

Michel de Montaigne's "Of Cannibals" essay. This is a short clip I cut out of the essay. Here, he is discussing what a cannibal had told him of his own society. Montaigne then later contrasts and compares this against the modern European community:

"He lists the vices of his people that are absent in the natives' culture: "there is no sort of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name for a magistrate or for political superiority, no custom of servitude, no riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no occupations but leisure ones, no care for any but common kin, no clothes, no agriculture, no mental, no use of wine or wheat." In their culture, "the very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, belittling, pardon - unheard of." Rather, they are a culture that values "valor against the enemy and love for their wives"- in other words, honor and familial devotion."

Montaigne's axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed in as that which is least known."

Have I put this on my blog somewhere before? I am not sure. But I absolutely agree with this quote.