“Because it was he, because it was I.”Michel de Montaigne · Eseuri · 1580 · I, 28
True friendship cannot be explained, because any reason would trivialize it.
Montaigne describes his bond with Étienne de La Boétie and deliberately refuses to give it a cause. Ordinary friendship rests on interests, pleasures, or mutual needs, so it has reasons; perfect friendship, he says, is a union of souls that recognize each other directly. The repeated, almost childlike formula is a tactic: any reasoning would trivialize the fact. When his friend died, he wrote there was no point in living except in memory.
Montaigne suggests that our inability to explain a friendship is not a flaw in us, but the very sign that it is genuine. If you could justify the bond, you could also compare: another friend more useful, more fun, closer by. And comparison would turn friendship into a transaction that can be replaced. What cannot be analyzed cannot be replaced either. Think of a friend you chose without being able to say why, yet whom you would not swap for anyone. The natural next question is: if we cannot explain friendship, can we at least know when it is missing?
Why it matters It resonates with anyone who has tried to explain why a particular friend matters and found they cannot.