Parenting & Family Quote by Michel de Montaigne

Montaigne pulls a neat rhetorical judo move: he takes what adults reflexively downgrade as "just play" and flips it into a category with moral and intellectual weight. The line sounds almost bureaucratic ("it is to be noted", "should be deemed"), and that cool, legalistic cadence is the point. He’s not pleading for tenderness toward children; he’s issuing a correction to a bad adult habit of mind.

The intent is both observational and disciplinary. In Montaigne's world, education is less about stuffing the head with Latin than shaping judgment, temperament, and social sense. Play is where those faculties actually show themselves. A child negotiating rules, testing limits, performing roles, and seeking recognition is not wasting time; they’re rehearsing the architecture of adulthood. Calling these acts "their most serious" is a reminder that seriousness isn’t a facial expression or a classroom posture. It’s the intensity of stake and learning - and for a child, the stakes of belonging, fairness, courage, and attention are immediate.

The subtext also cuts at adult vanity. We prefer to think the important parts of life happen under our supervision, in our institutions, on our terms. Montaigne suggests the opposite: children are already forming their characters in the supposedly unserious spaces adults barely notice. In a Renaissance culture obsessed with molding heirs and citizens, that’s quietly radical. He’s asking readers to watch children more closely, not to sentimentalize them, but to recognize play as the earliest arena of ethics, power, and self-making.