L NDIVIDUALISM, LIKE MOST "ISMS," is a word coined by nineteenth-century writers to describe a phenomenon with ancient roots and a bewildering variety of twentieth-century flowerings. It was a term of disapproval in the France of Maistre, Saint-Simon, and Tocqueville, but has positive connotations in the sturdy economic self-reliance of American mythology, the personalized eccentricity of the British, and the romantic genius of Germany. In contemporary political theory it is associated most closely with the "possessive individualism" ascribed by MacPherson to seventeenth-century Englishmen.' The focus on the individual, unique or uniform, essentially disconnected from others of his kind, as the core of value and the basic unit of social analysis, is one of the characteristics of our world. One of the most important roots of this phenomenon is a book that is not ordinarily included in the sacred canon of political theorists: the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's protean and fascinating treatise touches on many themes, but does not at first glance appear to have much to do with politics. The author protests in his letter to the reader that he wrote with only a "domestic and private goal" in mind, and cautions against wasting time on a frivolous exercise for the posthumous convenience of his family and friends. A great many readers, disregarding this disingenuous advice, have pushed on to discover a classic of self-portraiture, a penetrat-