Ineducable

 Stefan Zweig said that by the time Montaigne was 13, he was “ineducable.”

It’s not that Montaigne didn’t think or learn, but that he was resistant to guidance. Montaigne was a lifelong student, but he directed his own studies.

Timon said the same thing about Epicurus, “the least educated of mortals.”

Diogenes Laertius preserved Timon’s crack. The Greek suggests “unguided” as well as “uneducated.”

I am interested in this trait because I’m interested in the question of what it means to have a good education.

• Source: Stefan Zweig, Montaigne, translated by Will Stone; London: Pushkin Press, 2015, p. 76.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers; translated by R.D. Hicks; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991, Vol. II, p. 530.