Bakewell, Sarah. "Montaigne, Philosopher of Life, Part 4: Borrowing the Cat's Point of View." GUARDIAN May 31, 2010.

One of Montaigne's favourite hobbies was imagining the world from different perspectives. To remind himself how strange human behaviour looked if one's vision was not dulled by familiarity, he collected stories from his reading: tales of countries where men urinated squatting and women standing, where people blackened their teeth or elongated their ears with rings, where hair was worn long in front and short behind, or where boys were expected to kill their fathers at a certain age. It was not just that these were marvels in themselves. Montaigne loved such stories because they lent him an altered point of view from which to look back on his own culture and see it afresh. Most human beings judged what was merely habitual to be what was natural. Montaigne tried to wake himself from this dream. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/may/31/montaigne-philosophy-perspectivism.