TLDR: Not really related to the thread, so if you are not interested in Montaigne, skip this, as it won't be interesting for you. You have been warned.
I have the Frame version on my shelf, so that is what I've read. Not sure how much was lost in that translation?
I typically find Ion, or this a bit difficult of a read, so I will likely be misinterpreting some things. I tried to talk about this on another trading forum(a long time ago), but nobody was interested. I am generally a newb at philosophy or works like this.
I dunno what is most IMPORTANT, but I have some things that I think are somewhat interesting, particularly as a follower of this thread.
"History is more my quarry, or poetry, which I love with particular affection. For as Cleanthes said, just as sound, when pent up in the NARROW channel of a trumpet, comes out sharper and stronger, so it seems to me that a thought, when compressed into the numbered feet of poetry, springs forth much more violently and strikes me a much stiffer jolt."
^No real importance here, but just makes me think of all the poems posted here I never understand.
"There were two contrasting fancies. The philosopher Chrysippus mixed into his books, not merely passages, but entire works of other authors, and in one the Medea of Euripides; and Apoollodorus said that if you cut out of them all the foreign matter, the paper he used would be left blank. Epicurus, on the contrary, in three hundred volumes that he left put in not a single borrowed quotation."
"As for doing what I have discovered others doing, covering themselves with other men's armor until they don't show even their fingertips,... for those who want to hide their borrowings and appropriate them, this is first of all injustice and cowardice, that, having nothing of THEIR OWN worth bringing out, they try to present themselves under false colors; and second, it is stupid of them to content themselves with gaining deceitfully the ignorant approbation of the COMMON HERD."
^Here, I wasn't sure if he was being critical of such practices(using others thoughts), or if it was just something he thought about? As later, he does talk about borrowing from the ideas of others, as long as it becomes part of the borrower, and then becomes his own. We traders are always looking to be told how to trade... many we see show up to the thread, and demand easy answers, and antagonize those of us that find it interesting.
"For if he embraces Xenophon's and Plato's opinions by his own reasoning, they will no longer be theirs, they will be his. He who follows another follows nothing. He finds nothing; indeed he seeks nothing...He must imbibe their ways of thinking, not learn their precepts. And let him boldly forget, if he wants, where he got them, but let him know how to make them his own."
^So these passages... I get a somewhat contradictory meaning, but again, likely me misinterpreting. I take it to mean, that blindly taking other thoughts, without fully understanding and internalizing the meaning, is useless.
"Our tutors never stop bawling into our ears, as though they were pouring water into a funnel; and our task is only to repeat what has been told us."
^No real connection to the thread here, but just the general attitude Montaigne has towards general education, that it is more about remembering dates than understanding the substance of the thing.
"Let him be asked for an account not merely of the words of his lesson, but of its sense and substance."
"The BEES plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work that is all his own, to wit, his judgment."
^This is more about one taking from others, but making it their own... but really, I jsut thought it funny that the 'BEES' showed up here... that damn bizzy-BEE.
"Whoever asked his pupil what he thinks of rhetoric or grammar... They slap them into our memory with all their feathers on... Sad competence, a purely BOOKISH competence! I intent it to serve as decoration, not as foundation..."
^Seemingly more general opinions on what education of the masses is about. Book learning.
"I wish Paluel or Pompey, those find dancers of my time, could teach us capers just by performing them before us and w/o moving us from our seats... or that we could be taught to handle a horse or a pike, or a lute , or our voice, w/o practicing at it..."
^As mentioned, I didn't really come up with something MOST significant, but this might be one of those things. I.e., practice is required. Understanding the obvious may require
EXPERIENCE, and the only way to get that experience, is through practice, the act of doing? One must lose properly, to begin to win properly?
"Wonderful brilliance may be gained for human judgment by getting to know men. We are all huddled and concentrated in ourselves, and our vision is reduced to THE LENGTH OF OUR NOSE."
^Obvious what he is saying here, that we are bettered by knowing others... but the use of the emboldened bit is interesting.
"For all this education I do not want the boy to be made a prisoner. I do not want him to be given up to the surly humors of a choleric schoolmaster. I do not want to spoil his mind by keeping him in torture and at hard labor, as other do, fourteen or fifteen hours a day."
^Generally more on his opinion of education of the masses. This passage, and in general his opinion of the seemingly Germanic model of education, resonates.
[rant]Personally, I HAAAATED school growing up.
I mean... HATED IT!!! If I were equipped with a suicide button as a child, I would have pressed it a million times instead of attending school. I was not bullied, abused or anything of the sorts, but it felt liek a prison. The education, particularly of young boys just doesn't seem right.[/rant]
Being held captive for 8 hours a day, at a desk, makes no sense(but maybe its just me).
"Even games and exercise will be a good part of his study: running, wrestling, music, dancing, hunting, handling horses and weapons... It is not a soul that is being trained, not a body, but a man; these parts must not be separated."
