The Draft You Keep Current
Montaigne says he has scarcely any memory, then refuses the usual cover story. He will not let forgetfulness be recoded as ingratitude, or a weak faculty as a moral stain. The defect becomes a portrait: less ambition, less vanity, fewer stored injuries. He reports the instrument, not the brand.
Key Insight
Name the faculty you actually have. People will convert your limits into character judgments if you do not describe them first. Accuracy here is not self-pity. It is taking the measuring tool out of other people's hands.
“There is not a man living whom it would so little become to speak from memory as myself, for I have scarcely any at all.”Full analysis
