"Of Cannibals"

• questioning the prevailing opinion that different cultures are inferior, barbaric
• Western tendency to define civilization by their own standards

Citing the "purity of nature"

"This is a nation... where there is no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name of magistrate or political superiority; no use of service, riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no dividends, no properties, no employments, but those of leisure; no respect of kindred, but common, no apparel, no agriculture, no metal, no use of corn or wine. The very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, detraction, pardon, never heard of."

Which is more cruel? Torturing the living, or eating the dead?

"I am not sorry we note the barbarous horror of cannibalism, but grieved that, prying so narrowly into their faults, we are so blinded in ours. I think there is more barbarism in eating men alive than to feed upon them being dead; to mangle by tortures and torments a body full of lively sense... than to roast and eat him after he is dead."

The "noble savage"

Montaigne ends the essay with a classic stroke of dry irony, mocking his fellow Europeans who completely dismiss these profound insights simply because of the natives' appearance: "All that is not very ill; but what of that? They wear no kind of breeches nor hosen!"