Montaigne on Frugality and Brotherhood in the Masonic Lodge
Can abundance actually isolate us? It sounds paradoxical — the more we possess, the higher the walls we build around ourselves. Michel de Montaigne posed this very question over four hundred years ago in his brief but remarkably incisive essay “On the Frugality of Our Ancestors.” His answer is not a moralistic sermon but an invitation to reflect on what truly connects us as human beings. And it is precisely there that his thinking touches the heart of Freemasonry: the conviction that inner wealth and genuine connection outweigh any outward display of status. Possession as an Obstacle Montaigne opens his essay by looking back at antiquity. The Roman consuls and senators he describes lived with a simplicity that would have been unimaginable to his own contemporaries. Cato the Elder, Manius Curius Dentatus, Gaius Fabricius Luscinus — all men who bore enormous responsibility, yet whose households were scarcely different from those of their neighbours. Montaigne emphasises that these ancestors were not poor out of inability but out of conviction. Their frugality was a deliberate choice, a way of life that brought them closer to their fellow citizens rather than alienating them. A powerful thesis emerges here, one that reaches far beyond […]
