"Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs.
Michel de Montaigne was a great thinker of the Renaissance as well as a famous .
essayist, sometimes accredited with the invention of the essay writing form. Born in 1533 .
near Bordeaux, France to a wealthy and education conscious family, he was raised from .
the time of his birth until age six by household servants and tutors who only spoke to him .
in Latin. An extremely intelligent man, he entered law school at the age of thirteen and .
became a counselor to the Bordeaux parliament at 21. He later worked (at his father's .
request) on an English translation of Theologia naturalis and in the last 15 years of his .
life he also completed the three volumes of personal reflections which comprise his .
famous Essays. He himself was a Catholic, but he was influenced by the Protestant .
movement which flourished during his lifetime and like most Protestants he held a very .
cynical view of human nature; he is famous for arguing that humans are not superior but .
inferior to beasts. The Renaissance was all but over by the time he was born, but he was .
still very influenced by Renaissance thinkers, and like many of them he was very .
concerned with himself: his own views and opinions. In his Essays, his most famous .
work, he took himself as his object of study, and attempted to "assay" (weigh) his own .
nature and opinions as a model to study all humankind. .
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To understand this quote, penned over 400 years ago and worded somewhat .
confusingly to a modern reader, it must be picked apart almost word by word. "Whatever .
is enforced by command" for example is a vague phrase. Who is the commander and who .
is the enforcer? We know that all laws originate from some sort of recognized authority .
which imposes rules to bring about order in society, and so the authority which writes the .
law, "him who exacts", should be thought of as the "commander".