The Essays oblige us continually to refer not only to the problem of their origin – but to the generative place of their common places (topoi). We must, then, essay the division between Montaigne's public and private life. Here, and elsewhere, we encounter readings of Montaigne's conscience as a writer and politician which go to the very heart of the Essays. For this reason, we need to be careful in their exercise.

The problem we shall now focus upon is Montaigne's treatment of the relation between the public and private conscience of a man of politics. Montaigne was a courtier in the time of the civil religious wars of sixteenth-century France, Mayor of Bordeaux and a profound essayist of man's inner estate. Thus, although it is conventional to remark upon Montaigne's retirement and to notice his own disparagement of the Essays, we are in fact dealing with a man whose active life was spent in politics at a time when the conflict between the state and religion, interwoven with deadly quarrels, the massacre of Saint Barthélemy, and individual assassinations, could cost a man his life and property for just a word or thought out of season. A first direction is to contrast Montaigne with Machiavelli, since political theorists can be counted upon to share an interest in Machiavelli and, presumably, in what might relate to him:

Now, two remarks are in order here. In the first place, this sort of judgement is over influenced by a consideration of Montaigne's later years. It does not sufficiently weigh Montaigne's evaluation of what is an activity fitting to a young man – it is unquestionably war and politics – and what is fitting to an older man, whose body is as little suited to making war as it is to making love! Here, again, Montaigne's interests are in line with the Renaissance conviction that war must be the principal subject of historical analysis once history deals with res gestae.