It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.

The line comes from Montaigne’s Essays, written and repeatedly revised from the 1570s until his death in 1592, in which he pioneers an introspective, self-examining prose meant to “try” (essayer) his own judgment. Living amid the French Wars of Religion and after withdrawing from public life to his library tower, Montaigne turns observation inward, attempting to describe the shifting motions of thought, mood, and attention. The remark reflects his method: he distrusts rigid systems and instead records the mind’s variability as it actually appears in experience, acknowledging how difficult it is to capture mental life in stable language.

Montaigne argues that self-knowledge is not a simple act of looking inward but a difficult craft. The mind is “wandering,” layered, and partly opaque even to itself; its movements are numerous, fleeting, and hard to fix without distortion. The image of “immobilizing” flutterings suggests the paradox of introspection: the moment we try to pin down a thought or feeling, we change it. The passage also defends the essay form—provisional, digressive, and open-ended—as better suited than systematic philosophy to represent consciousness. It anticipates later accounts of the stream of consciousness and the limits of introspective certainty.