Like most sensible men, Montaigne had an unreasonable fondness for reason; unlike most, he possessed an intellect that showed him the final consequences of his fancy. Not only have we no sufficient reason for believing that we know anything, we have none for affirming that we know nothing. By sheer reasonableness we are reduced to a state of pure Pyrrhonism, where, like the poor donkey, we must die of starvation midway between two equally large and equally appetizing bundles of hay. An affectation of superior ignorance has been a favourite literary device from the days of the Preacher to those of Anatole France. Montaigne loves to tease and confound us with a "Que scay-ie," he has the common literary taste for humiliating unsympathetic readers; but he has also a taste for honesty not so common, even in literature. Doubt is a mark of good sense: honest doubt is a mark of genius almost. In his reflective moments the reasonable man inclines to believe that reason can prove nothing--except what he believes. How fearlessly did those nineteenth-century apostles of Reason make havoc in the parlours of meek curates and spinsters, thundering against the altogether insufficient grounds on which were accepted the surprising adventures of Noah and his Ark! But when they were told that Reason was as unfriendly to their moral code and the methods of science as to the Book of Genesis, they clapped her in jail without more ado. Reason affords no solid grounds for holding a good world better than a bad, and the sacred law of cause and effect itself admits of no logical demonstration. "Prison or the Mad House," cried the men of good sense; Montaigne was more thorough--"Tolerance," said he.