Montaigne and Locke

Montaigne’s Essays were widely read, not only during his life. Also after his death in 1592 the work kept attracting many readers. Not only the general reader with some education read the Essays, but also influential persons who would have a big impact on the development of our intellectual life did. The impact of the Essays in the years after Montaigne’s death was especially big in England, even more than in France. One of the readers there was the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). We know that he possessed two copies of the Essays: a copy of a 1669 edition in French and a copy of an English translation published in 1603. We also know from Locke’s journal that he read the Essays in 1676-7 and 1684.
Locke didn’t only read Montaigne’s book; he was also influenced by it. Especially the influence of Montaigne on Locke’s ideas on education is striking. Like Montaigne Locke acted as a kind of advisor of the nobility and gentry on the education of their sons. Even more, unlike Montaigne, who was a jurist, Locke has also worked for some time as a tutor and governor for the sons of the gentry. Like Montaigne, Locke wrote also down his ideas on education, namely in letters and in a treatise titled Some thoughts on education (1693). In writing the treatise he didn’t only fall back on his own experience as a tutor and governor but also on what he had read about education. According to Warren Boutcher the exact literary sources that Locke used there are still debated. However “a contemporary collaborator of Locke, Pierre Coste, thought Montaigne’s Essais, especially I 25, to be the most important source and analogue”. Book I 25 is Montaigne’s essay titled “Of the education of children”. Locke himself mentions Montaigne only once in the treatise, but the whole context shows, so Warren, that Locke “closely … associates Montaigne with the topics of the choice of the right ‘governor’ or ‘tutor’ and of the direct method of Latin-learning–the topics of Essais I 25.” I think that this is enough to show the influence of Montaigne on Locke’s ideas on education; you can find the details in Boutcher’s book (see Sources below).
We see Montaigne’s influence on Locke also in other works, but the immediate impact of Montaigne on Locke is often difficult to demonstrate. That Locke has been influenced by the Essays when developing his ideas on democracy and toleration is not unlikely. However, Locke doesn’t mention Montaigne even once in his main work An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), although it is striking that he called this book (in imitation of Montaigne?) an essay. Alexander Moseley devotes in his intellectual biography of John Locke a chapter to the influence of Montaigne on Locke and notes that both authors have some striking points in common (but it is remarkable that he doesn’t mention the indication of the direct influence of Montaigne on Locke discussed by Boutcher). Anyway, I think that if we take all the similarities between Montaigne and Locke together and also think of the direct reference of Locke to Montaigne just mentioned, then we must conclude that Locke must have been much influenced by the Essays.
Recently I was leafing through Montaigne’s essay “Apology for Raimond Sebond” (Book II 12) for a blog for my Dutch Montaigne blog website (https://rondommontaigne.blogspot.com/). Suddenly my eye was caught by a sentence that I had underlined and that made me immediately think of Locke. This is the sentence: “The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould”. A few words later Montaigne speaks of “princes” instead of “emperors”. Then it is only one step to Locke, for what does Locke write in his Essay (Book II, Chap. XXVII, § 15): “For should the Soul of a Prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the Prince’s past Life, enter and inform the Body of a Cobler as soon deserted by his own Soul, every one sees, he would be the same Person with the Prince, accountable only for the Prince’s Actions: But who would say it was the same Man?” Etc. It is the famous example in the famous passage in which Locke discusses the problem of personal identity, a problem that I have also treated several times in my blogs. Of course, any similarity between two texts of two different authors can be mere chance, but in view of the fact that we know that Locke has read Montaigne’s Essays, while we also know that Locke explicitly refers somewhere to Montaigne, the similarity is striking. The similarity between Locke and Montaigne here can be mere chance, but the influence of one author on another author often shows itself in the details; maybe just in the details. 

Sources

- Boutcher, Warren, The school of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe. Volume 2: The Reader-Writer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017; pp. 367-371.

- Moseley, Alexander, John Locke. London, etc.: Bloomsbury, 2007; pp. 37-38.