from the "wise and prudent" and reveals them--or at any
rate all that will ever be revealed of them--to "babes and sucklings."

Those who read Montaigne with a natural affinity for his peculiar
turn of mind, will find themselves in a position to regard
very humorously and lightly the portentous claims of modern
philosophers whether they be rationalists or intuitivists. "There are
more things in Heaven and earth," they will retort to these scholarly
Horatios in the very vein of that Prince of Denmark who--according
to reliable critical opinion--was actually modelled on Montaigne
himself.

They will be encouraged to go on, as before, making the best of
what the traditional wisdom of the centuries brings them, but not
taking even this with more seriousness than its pathetic weight of
human experience demands, and not dreaming that, with even this to
help them, they are very closely initiated into the ultimate mystery.

They will be encouraged to go on as before, enjoying the books of
the writers with a pinch of pleasant salt, but enjoying them with
infinite zest and profit, and, at least, with full _aesthetic_
appreciation.

They will be encouraged to fall back upon the kindly possibilities
and broad hopeful vistas to which the unsophisticated heart of man
naturally and spontaneously turns.

They will be encouraged to go to the "highways and hedges" for
their omens, to the felicitous encounters of the common road for
their auguries and inspirations. They will listen reverently to the
chatter of very simple people, and catch the shadow of the wings of
fate falling upon very homely heads. The rough earth-wisdom of
ploughed fields, heavy with brown sun-lit mud, will be redolent for
them with whispers and hints and intimations of things that no
philosophy can include and no psychology explain.

Out of the coarse rankness of rude primitive natures strange sweet
mysteries will come to light, and upon the sensual lusts of satyrs,
gambolling grossly in rain-soaked leafy midnights, the moon of
tender purity will shed down her virginal benediction.

For them the grotesque roots of trees will leer magically from the
wayside to meet the uncouth gestures of the labourer and his trull;
while in the smoke-thick air of mellow tavern-corners the shameless
mirth of honest revellers philosophising upon the world will have a
smack of true divinity.

They will be encouraged--the people who read Montaigne--to sink
once more into the