Areopagus Volume LXX

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the seventieth volume of the Areopagus. No seven lessons this week. I have, instead, written for your perusal and critique and — I hope! — enjoyment, an essay. It was Michel de Montaigne, that solitary Frenchman, who invented the "essay" as we understand it today. Alone in his castle library in 16th century France, while Europe tore itself to pieces in the Wars of Religion, Montaigne set himself "trials" — essais in French, thus becoming essays in English — on subjects as varied as the education of children, cuisine, liars, and cannibals. That is what I have done, then. And it is heroes I have chosen to write about. Why? I think they are a marvellous way of journeying through history, of seeing and understanding history — and thus of seeing and understanding ourselves all the more clearly.

I should mention, also, that I will roll over the answers to last week's question to next week. I asked:

Can money make a person truly happy?

There's still time to answer, then. …