On Being a Busybody (11-12)

The greatest factor, however, in ridding ourselves of this affliction is the habit of beginning early to train and teach ourselves to acquire this self-control. It is, in fact, by habituation that the disease has come to increase, advancing, as it does, little by little. How this habit is acquired, we shall learn when we discuss the proper training. So first let us begin with the most trifling and unimportant matters. What difficulty is there about refraining from reading the inscriptions on tombs as we journey along the roads? Or what is there arduous in just glancing at the writing on walls when we take our walks? We have only to remind ourselves that

nothing useful or pleasant has been written there: merely so-and-so commemorates so-and-so wishing him well, and someone else is the best of friends, and much twaddle of this sort.[*] It may seem that no harm will come from reading these, but harm you it does by imperceptibly instilling the practice of searching out matters which do not concern you. And as hunters do not allow young hounds to turn aside and follow every scent, but pull them up and check them with the leash, keeping their sense of smell pure and untainted for their proper task in order that it may keep more keenly to the trail,

With nostrils tracking down the paths of beasts[*];

so one should be careful to do away with or divert to useful ends the sallies and wanderings of the busybody, directed as they are to everything that one may see and hear. For as eagles and lions[*] draw in their claws when they walk so that they may not wear off the sharpness of the tips, so, if we consider that curiosity for learning has also a sharp and keen edge, let us not waste or blunt it upon matters of no value.

In the second place, then, let us accustom ourselves not to look inside when we pass another’s door, nor with our curious gaze to clutch, as it were by main force, at what is happening within, but let us ever keep ready for use the saying of Xenocrates,

that it makes no difference whether it is the feet or the eyes that we set within another’s house; for what the eyes behold is neither just nor honourable, and not even pleasant.

Unsightly, stranger, are the things within,[*]

since the greater part of what we see inside is of this sort-kitchen utensils lying about and servant-girls sitting in idleness, and nothing important or pleasurable. And this practice of throwing sidelong and furtive glances, distorting the soul as it does, is shameful, and the habit it implants is depraved. For instance, when Diogenes[*] saw the Olympic victor Dioxippus making his triumphal entry in his chariot and unable to tear his eyes away from a beautiful woman who was among the spectators of the procession, but continually turning around and throwing side-glances in her direction, Do you see, said the Cynic, how a slip of a girl gets a strangle-hold on our athlete? And you may observe how every kind of spectacle alike gets a strangle-hold on busybodies and twists their necks round when they once acquire a habit and practice of scattering their glances in all directions. But, as I think, the faculty of vision should not be spinning about outside of us,[*] like an ill-trained servant girl, but when it is sent on an errand by the soul it should quickly reach its destination and deliver its message, then return again in good order within the governance of the reason and heed its command. But as it is, the words of Sophocles[*] come true:

Then the Aenianian’s hard-mouthed yearlings break

From his control and bolt;

that is, the senses which have not received what we called above right instruction and training run away, dragging the intellect with them, and often plunge it into deep disaster. Consequently, though that story about Democritus[*] is false, that he deliberately destroyed his sight by fixing his eyes on a red-hot mirror and allowing its heat to be reflected on his sight, in order that his eyes might not repeatedly summon his intellect outside and disturb it, but might allow his mind to remain inside at home and occupy itself with pure thinking, blocking up as it were windows which open on the street; yet nothing is more true than this, that those who make most use of the intellect make fewest calls upon the senses.[*] We observe, for instance, that men have built their sanctuaries of the Muses[*] far from cities and that they have called night kindly[*] from a belief that its quiet and absence of distraction is greatly conducive to the investigation and solution of the problems in hand.