“I have never done anything without thinking of myself; and I do nothing else but think of myself.”Michel de Montaigne · Eseuri · 1580 · III, 13
Self-study is not egoism, but the shortest path to universal knowledge.
Montaigne confesses, with disarming honesty, that the self is his permanent center of interest. This is not vanity but method: since every person carries the whole human condition, studying oneself is the shortest path to universal knowledge. The mechanism is participatory observation: what I experience is material for what man is. When you note your envy at a friend's success, you examine more than yourself; you examine the species.
Montaigne does not examine only his grand thoughts, but his smallest gestures too. How he chews, how he sleeps, how he gets annoyed. For him, banal details are the most honest evidence about the human being. A lofty thought can lie, but a daily habit hardly can. That is why he writes down his weaknesses, not just his virtues. Think of how you postpone an unpleasant phone call: in that postponement you see something true about yourself. And what is true of you is, in fact, true of anyone. But if you look at yourself so closely, how do you stay yourself rather than become a cold laboratory specimen?
Why it matters It legitimizes introspective writing: observing yourself is not egoism but a form of general knowledge.