The  New  Learning,  the  re-discovery  of  the
classics,  had  given  fresh  impetus  to  education,
and  educational  treatises  were  in  vogue.  The
Humanists  were  very  fond  of  writing  them,
and  dull  enough  they  usually  are.  Happily
Rabelais  wrote  one  too  :  his  letter  of  counsel
to  Gargantua,  on  the  bringing-up  of  Prince
Pantagruel,  is  one  of  the  noblest  discourses
that  has  ever  been  printed  on  the  subject.  It
is  nobler  than  the  utterances  of  Montaigne,
because  it  is  warmed  by  fire  from  the  heart,
not  only  by  light  from  the  head.  Yet
different  roads  make  for  the  same  goals.  No
one  who  has  read  it  is  likely  to  forget  Rabe-
lais' glorious  morning  scamper  of  wit — his
dissertation,  his  exuberant  tilting  against  the
Sorbonne  and  the  Schoolmen.  One  he  is  also
with  Montaigne  in  his  splendid  pursuit  of
sincerity — his  insistence  that,  from  the  outset,
human  beings  must  learn  to  think  for  them-
selves. But  where  Rabelais  trumpets,  Mon-
taigne speaks.  We  are  not  deafened  by  noise
and  by  laughter  ;  we  can  hear,  and  hear  well.
THE  PHILOSOPHER  229

And  where  Rabelais  tells  a  fable,  Montaigne
has  no  disguise.  He  speaks  to  us  direct,
without  distraction.  Besides,  if  Rabelais  goes
deeper,  Montaigne  is  more  modern,  not  only
in  his  ideas,  but  in  the  way  he  expresses  them.
