If a house is stuffy, dark, chilly, or unhealthy, it is perhaps "515 B" best to get out of it. But if long association makes you fond of the place, you may alter the lights, shift the stairs, open a door here and close one there, and so make it brighter, fresher, and more wholesome. Even cities have sometimes been improved "C" by such rearrangement. For instance, it is said that my own native town, which used to face the west and receive the full force of the afternoon sun from Parnassus, was turned by Chairon so as to front the east. Empedocles, the natural philosopher, once blocked up a mountain gorge, which sent a destructive and pestilential south wind blowing down upon the plains. By this means, it was thought, he shut the plague out of the district.

Well, since there are certain injurious and unhealthy states of mind which chill and darken the soul, it would be best to get rid of them—to make a clean sweep to the foundations, and give ourselves the benefit of a clear sky, light, and pure air "D" to breathe. If not, we should reform and readjust them by turning them some other way about.

We may take the vice of the busybody as an instance in point. It is a love of prying into other people’s troubles, a disease tainted—we may believe—with both envy and malice.

Pray turn your pryingness the other way about, and make it face inwards. If you are so fond of the business of inquiring into defects, you will find plenty to occupy you at home.

"*" Abundant as leaves on the oak or the water that rolls from Alizon will you find the errors in your conduct, the disorders in your heart and mind, and the lapses in your duty.

"E" According to Xenophon, a good householder has a special place for the utensils of sacrifice, and a special place for those of the table; agricultural implements are stored in one room, weapons of war in another. In your own case you have one stock of faults arising from envy, another from jealousy, another from cowardice, another from meanness. These are the faults for you to inspect and examine. Block up the windows "F" and alleys of your inquisitiveness on the side towards your neighbours, and open others which look into your own house—the male quarters, the female quarters, the living-rooms of the servants. Our busy curiosity will find occupation of a profitable and salutary, instead of a useless and malicious, kind, if each one will say to himself:

As it is, we are all of us like the Lamia in the fable, of whom "516" we are told that at home she is asleep and blind, with her eyes stowed away in a jar, but that when she comes abroad she puts them in and can see. Outside, and in dealing with others, we furnish our malice with an eye in the shape of our meddlesomeness, but we are continually being tripped up by our own misdeeds and vices, of which we are unaware, because we provide ourselves with no light or vision to perceive them. It follows that the busybody is a better friend to his enemies than to himself. While censoriously reproving their shortcomings and showing them what they ought to avoid or amend, he is so taken up with faults outside that he overlooks most of those at home.

"B" Odysseus refused even to talk to his mother, until he had got his answer from the seer concerning the business which had brought him to Hades. When he had received the information, he turned to her, and also began to put questions to the other women, asking who Tyro was, and the beautiful Chloris, and why Epicaste met her death by

Not so we. While treating our own concerns with the greatest indifference, ignorance, and neglect, we begin discussing other people’s pedigrees—how our neighbour’s grandfather was a Syrian and his grandmother a Thracian. ‘So-and-So owes more than seven hundred pounds, and cannot pay the interest.’ We also make it our business to inquire about such matters as where So-and-So got his wife from, and what private talk was that between A and B in the corner. Socrates, on the other "C" hand, went about inquiring, ‘By what arguments did Pythagoras carry conviction?’ So Aristippus, when he met Ischomachus at Olympia, proceeded to ask by what kind of conversation Socrates affected the Athenians as he did. When he had gleaned a few seeds or samples of his talk, he was so moved that he suffered a physical collapse, and became quite pale and thin. In the end he set sail for Athens, and slaked his thirst with draughts from the fountain-head, studying the man, his discourses and his philosophy, of which the aim was to recognize one’s own vices and get rid of them.

But there are some to whom their own life is a most distressing "D" spectacle, and who therefore cannot bear to look at it nor to reflect the light of reason upon themselves. Their soul is so fraught with all manner of vices, that, shuddering with horror at what lies within, it darts away from home, and goes prowling round other men’s concerns, where it lets its malice batten and grow fat.

It often happens that a domestic fowl, though there is plenty of food lying at its disposal, will slink into a corner and scratch

It is much the same with the busybody. Ignoring the topics and questions which are open to all, and which no one prevents him from asking about or is annoyed with him if he does ask, "E" he goes picking out of every house the troubles which it is endeavouring to bury out of sight. But surely it was a neat answer which the Egyptian made to the man who asked him what he was carrying in that wrapper. ‘That,’ said he, ‘is why it is in a wrapper.’ And why, pray, are you so inquisitive about a thing which is being concealed? If it had not been something undesirable, there would have been no concealment. It is not usual to walk into another man’s house without knocking at the door. Nowadays there are doorkeepers—formerly knockers were beaten upon the doors in order to give warning—the intention being that the stranger shall not surprise the lady of the "F" house or her daughter in the open, or come upon a slave receiving punishment, or the handmaids screaming. But these are exactly the things which the busybody steals in to see. At a staid and quiet household he would have no pleasure in looking, even if he were invited. His object is to uncover and make public those things to which keys, bolts, and the street-door owe their existence. ‘The winds which vex us most,’ says Ariston, ‘are those which pull up our cloaks.’ But the busybody strips off not only our mantles and tunics, but our walls; he spreads our doors wide open, and makes his way like a piercing wind through the ‘maiden of tender skin‘, prying and sneaking into "517" her bacchic revels, her dances, and her all-night festivals.

As Cleon in the comedy had

so the busybody’s thoughts are at one and the same time in the houses of the rich and the hovels of the poor, in the courts of kings and the chambers of the newly-wed. He searches into everybody’s business—business of strangers, and business of potentates. Nor is his search without danger. If one were to take a taste of aconite because he was inquisitive as to its properties, he would find that he had killed the learner before he got his lesson. So those who pry into the troubles of the "B" great destroy themselves before discovering what they seek. If any one is not satisfied with the beams which the sun lavishes so abundantly upon all, but audaciously insists upon gazing unabashed at the orb itself and probing the light to its heart, the result is blindness. It was therefore wise of Philippides, the comic poet, when King Lysimachus once asked him, ‘What can I give you of mine?’ to reply, ‘Anything, Sire, but your secrets.’ The finest and most pleasant aspects of royalty are those displayed outwardly—its banquets, wealth, pomps and shows, graces and favours. But if a king has any secret, keep away from it and leave it alone. A king does not conceal his "C" joy when prosperous, nor his laughter when jocose, nor his intention to do a kindness or confer a boon. When he hides a thing, when he is glum, unsmiling, unapproachable, it is time for alarm. It means that he has been storing up anger, and that it is festering; or that he is sullenly meditating a severe punishment; or that he is jealous of his wife, or suspicious of his son, or distrustful of a friend. Run, run from that cloud which is gathering so black! You cannot possibly miss the thunder and lightning, when the matter which is now a secret bursts out in storm.

How, then, are we to escape this vice? By turning our inquisitiveness—as we have said—the other way round, and, as far as possible, directing our minds to better and more interesting objects. If you are to pry, pry into questions "D" connected with sky, earth, air, or sea. You are by nature fond of looking either at little things or at big things. If at big things, apply your curiosity to the sun; ask where he sets and whence he rises. Inquire into the changes of the moon, as if she were a human being. Ask where she loses so much of her light, and whence she gets it back; how

These, too, are secrets—the secrets of Nature; but Nature has "E" no grievance against those who find them out. Are the big things beyond you? Then pry into the smaller ones. Ask how it is that some plants are always flourishing and green, proudly displaying their wealth at every season, while others are at one moment as good as these, but at another have squandered their abundance all at once, like some human spendthrift, and are left bare and beggared. Why, again, do some plants produce elongated fruits, some angular, some round and globelike?

But perhaps you will have no curiosity for such concerns, "F" because there is nothing wrong about them. Well, if inquisitiveness absolutely must be always browsing and passing its time among things sordid, like a maggot among dead matter, let us introduce it to history and story, and supply it with bad things in abundance and without stint. For there it will find

seductions of women, assaults by slaves, slanderings of friends, concoctions of poisons, envies, jealousies, shipwrecks of homes, overthrows of rulers. Take your fill, enjoy yourself, and cause no annoyance or pain to any of those with whom you come in contact.

Apparently, however, inquisitiveness finds no pleasure in scandals which are stale; it wants them hot and fresh. And "518" while it enjoys the spectacle of a novel tragedy, it takes no sort of interest in the comedy or more cheerful side of life. Consequently the busybody lends but a careless and indifferent ear to the account of a wedding, a sacrifice, or a complimentary ‘farewell’. He says he has already heard most of the details, and urges the narrator to cut them short or omit them. But if any one will sit by him and tell him the news about the corruption of a girl or the unfaithfulness of a wife or an impending action at law or a quarrel between brothers, there is no sleepiness or hurry about him, but

As applied to the busybody, the words

are a true saying. As a cupping-glass sucks from the flesh what "B" is worst in it, so the inquisitive ear draws to itself the most undesirable topics. To vary the figure: cities have certain ‘Accursed’ or ‘Dismal’ gates, through which they take out criminals on their way to death and throw the refuse and offscourings of purification, while nothing sacred or undefiled goes in or out through them. So with the ears of the busybody. They give passage to nothing fine or useful, but serve only as the pathway of gruesome communications, with their load of foul and polluted gossip.

"C" That is the one Muse and Siren of the busybody, the most pleasant of all music to his ear. For his vice is a love of finding out whatever is secret and concealed, and no one conceals a good thing when he has one; on the contrary, he will pretend to one which has no existence. Since therefore it is troubles that the busybody is eager to discover, the disease from which he suffers is malignant gloating—own brother to envy and spite. For envy is pain at another’s good; malignity is pleasure at another’s harm; and the parent of both is ill-nature—the "D" feeling of a savage or a brute beast.

So painful do we all find it to have our troubles revealed, that there are many who would rather die than tell a physician of a secret disease. Imagine Herophilus or Erasistratus, or Asclepius himself—when he was a mortal man—calling from house to house with his drugs and his instruments, and asking whether a man had a fistula or a woman a cancer in the womb! Inquisitiveness in their profession may, it is true, save a life. None the less, I presume, every one would have scouted such a person, "E" for coming to investigate other people’s ailments without waiting till he was required and sent for. Yet our busybody searches out precisely these, or even worse, ailments; and, since he does so not by way of curing them, but merely of disclosing them, he deserves the hatred he gets.

We are annoyed and indignant with the collector of customs,^[42] not when he picks out and levies on those articles which we import openly, but when, in the search for hidden goods, he ransacks among baggage and merchandise which are not in "F" question. Yet the law permits him to do so, and he is the loser if he does not. On the other hand, the busybody lets his own concerns go to ruin, while he is occupying himself with those of other people. He rarely takes a walk to the farm; it is too lonely, and he cannot bear the quiet and silence. And if, after a time, he does chance along, he has a keener eye for his neighbour’s vines than for his own. He proceeds to ask how many of his neighbour’s cattle have died, or how much of his wine turned sour. After a good meal of such news he is quickly off and away.

Your true and genuine type of farmer has no desire to hear even the news which finds its own way from the city. Says he:

"519" But to your busybody country life is a stale and uninteresting thing with nothing to fuss about. He therefore flees from it, and pushes into the Exchange, the Market, or the Harbour. ‘Is there any news?’ ‘Why, weren’t you at market early this morning? Do you imagine there has been a revolution in three hours?’ If, however, any one has a piece of news to tell, down he gets from his horse, grasps the man’s hand, kisses him, and stands there listening. But if some one meets him and says there is nothing fresh, he exclaims, as if he were annoyed: ‘What? Haven’t you been at market? Haven’t you been near the Board-Room? And haven’t you met the new arrivals from "B" Italy?’

The Locrian magistrates therefore did right in fining any one who, after being out of town, came up and asked, ‘Is there any news?’ As the butchers pray for a good supply of animals, and fishermen for a good supply of fish, so busybodies pray for a good supply of calamities, for plenty of troubles, for novelties and changes. They must always have their fish to catch or carcass to cut up.

Another good rule was that of the legislator of Thurii, who forbade the lampooning of citizens on the stage, with the exception of adulterers and busybodies. The one class bears a resemblance to the other, adultery being a sort of inquisitiveness into "C" another’s pleasure, and a prying search into matters protected from the general eye, while inquisitiveness is the illicit denuding and corrupting of a secret. While a natural consequence of much learning is having much to say, and therefore Pythagoras enjoined upon the young a five years’ silence, which he called ‘Truce to Speech’, the necessary concomitant of curiosity is speaking evil. What the curious delight to hear, they delight to talk about; what they take pains to gather from others, they joy in giving out to new hearers. It follows that, besides its "D" other drawbacks, their disease actually stands in the way of its own desires. For every one is on his guard to hide things from them, and is reluctant to do anything when the busybody is looking, or to say anything when he is listening. People put off a consultation and postpone the consideration of business until such persons are out of the way. If, when a secret matter is towards, or an important action is in the doing, a busybody appears upon the scene, they take it away and hide it, as they "E" would a piece of victuals when the cat comes past. Often, therefore, he is the only person not permitted to hear or see what others may see and hear.

For the same reason the busybody can find no one to trust him. We would rather trust our letters, papers, or seals to a slave or a stranger than to an inquisitive relation or friend. Bellerophon, though the writing which he carried was about himself, would not broach it, but showed the same continence in keeping his hands off the king’s letter as in keeping them off his wife.

Yes, inquisitiveness is as incontinent as adultery, and not only incontinent, but terribly silly and foolish. To pass by so many women who are public property, and to struggle to get at one "F" who is kept under lock and key, who is expensive, and perhaps ugly to boot, is the very height of insanity. The busybody is just as bad. He passes by much that is admirable to see and hear, many an excellent discourse or discussion, to dig into another man’s poor little letter or clap his ear to his neighbour’s wall, listening to slaves and womenfolk whispering together, and incurring danger often, and discredit always.

"520" Well, if he wishes to get rid of his vice, the busybody will find nothing so helpful as to think over the discoveries he has hitherto made. Simonides used to say that, in opening his boxes after a lapse of time, he found the fee-box always full and the thanks-box always empty. So, if one were to open the store-room of inquisitiveness after an interval, and to contemplate all the useless, futile, and uninviting things with which it is filled, he would probably become sick of the business, so nauseating and senseless would it appear.

Suppose a person to run over the works of our old writers and pick out their faultiest passages, compiling and keeping a book full of such things as ‘headless’ lines of Homer, solecisms "B" in the tragedians, the indecent and licentious language to women by which Archilochus makes a sorry show of himself. Does he not deserve the execration in the tragedy:

Execration apart, his treasury, filled with other men’s faults, possesses neither beauty nor use. It is like the town which Philip founded with the rudest riff-raff, and which he called Knaveborough.

With the busybody, however, it is not from lines of poetry, but from lives, that he goes gleaning and gathering blunders and slips and solecisms, till the memory which he carries about is the dullest and dreariest record-box, crammed with ugly things. "C"

At Rome there are those who set no store by the paintings, the statues, or—failing these—the handsome children or women on sale, but who haunt the monster-market, examining specimens with no calves to their legs, or with weasel-elbows, three eyes, or ostrich-heads, and looking out for the appearance of any

Yet if you keep on showing them such sights, they will soon become surfeited and sick of it all. In the same way those who make it their business to pry into other people’s failures in their affairs, blots on their pedigree, disturbances and delinquencies in their homes, will do well to remind themselves how thankless "D" and unprofitable their previous discoveries have proved.

The most effective way, however, of preventing this weakness is to form a habit—to begin at an early stage and train ourselves systematically to acquire the necessary self-control. It is by habit that the vice increases, the advance of the disease being gradual. How this is, we shall see, in discussing the proper method of practice.

Let us make a beginning with comparatively trifling and insignificant matters.

On the roads it can be no difficult matter to abstain from reading "E" the inscriptions on the tombs. Nor in the promenades can there be any hardship in refusing to let the eye linger upon the writings on the walls. You have only to tell yourself that they contain nothing useful or entertaining. There is A expressing his ‘kind sentiments’ towards B; So-and-So described as ‘the best of friends’; and much mere twaddle of the same kind. No doubt it seems as if the reading of them does you no harm; but harm you it does, without your knowing it, by inducing a habit of inquiring into things which do not concern you. Hunters do not permit young hounds to turn aside and "F" follow up every scent, but pull them sharply back with the leash, so as to keep their power of smell in perfectly clean condition for their proper work, and make it stick more keenly to the tracks:

The same watchfulness must be shown in suppressing, or in diverting to useful ends, the tendency of an inquisitive person to run off the track and wander after everything that he can see or hear. An eagle or a lion gathers its talons in when it "521" walks, so as not to wear the sharp edge from their tips. Similarly let us treat the inquiring spirit as the keen edge to our love of learning, and refrain from wasting or blunting it upon objects of no value.

In the next place let us train ourselves, when passing another’s door, to refrain from looking in, or from letting our inquisitive gaze clutch at what is passing inside. Xenocrates said—and we shall do well to keep the remark in mind—that whether we set foot or set eyes in another man’s house makes no difference. Not only is such prying unfair and improper; we get no pleasure from the spectacle.

is a saying which is generally true of what we see inside—a litter of pots and pans, or servant-girls sitting about, but nothing of "B" any importance or interest. This furtive throwing of sidelong glances, which at the same time gives a kind of squint to the mind, is ugly, and the habit is demoralizing. When the Olympian victor Dioxippus was making a triumphal entry in a chariot, and could not drag his eyes from a beautiful woman among the spectators, but kept turning half round and throwing side glances in her direction, Diogenes—who saw it all—remarked, ‘See how a bit of a girl gets the neck-grip on our great athlete!’ Inquisitive people, however, are to be seen gripped by the neck and twisted about by any kind of sight, when they once develop a habit of squandering their glances in all directions.

This is assuredly no right use of the faculty of vision. It should "C" not go gadding about like some ill-trained maidservant; but when the mind sends it upon an errand, it should make haste to reach its destination, deliver its message, and then come quietly home again to wait upon the commands of the reason. Instead of this, the case is as in Sophocles:

When the faculty of vision has not been tutored and trained in the proper manner as above described, it runs away, drags "D" the mind with it, and often brings it into disastrous collisions.

There is a story that Democritus deliberately destroyed his sight by fixing his eyes upon a red-hot mirror and allowing its heat to be focussed upon them. His object, it is said, was to block up the windows toward the street, and thus prevent the disturbance of his intellect by repeated calls from outside, enabling it to stay at home and devote itself to pure thinking. Though the story is a fiction, nothing is more true than that those who make most use of their mind make few calls upon the senses. Note how our halls of learning are built far out from the towns, and how night has been styled the ‘well-minded‘, from a belief "E" that quiet and the absence of distraction are a powerful aid to intellectual discovery and research.

Suppose, again, that people are quarrelling and abusing each other in the market-place. It requires no great effort of self-denial to keep at a distance. When a crowd is running towards a certain spot, it is easy for you to remain seated, or else, if you lack the necessary strength of mind, to get up and go away. There is no advantage to be got from mixing yourself with busybodies, whereas you will derive great benefit from putting a forcible check upon your curiosity and training it to obey the commands of the reason.

"F" We may now go a step further, and tax ourselves more severely. It is good practice, when a successful entertainment is going on in a public hall, to pass it by; when our friends invite us to a performance by a dancer or comedian, to decline; when there is a roar in the race-ground or the circus, to take no notice. Socrates used to urge the avoidance of all foods and drinks which tempt one to eat when he is not hungry or to drink when he is not thirsty. In the same way we shall do well to shun carefully all appeals to eye or ear, when, though they are no business of ours, their attractions prove too much for us.

Cyrus refused to see Panthea, and when Araspes talked of her "522" remarkable beauty, his answer was: ‘All the more reason for keeping away from her. If I took your advice and went to see her, she might perhaps tempt me to be visiting her again when I could not spare the time, and to be sitting and looking at her to the neglect of much important business.’ In the same way Alexander refused to set eyes on Darius’ wife, who was said to be strikingly handsome. Though he visited the mother—an elderly woman—he would not bring himself to see her young and beautiful daughter. But what we do is to peep into women’s litters and hang about their windows, finding nothing improper in encouraging our curiosity and allowing it such dangerous "B" and unchecked play.

Note how you may train yourself for other virtues. To learn justice you should sometimes forgo an honest gain, and so accustom yourself to keep aloof from dishonest ones. Similarly, to learn continence, you should sometimes hold aloof from your own wife, and so secure yourself against temptation from another’s. Apply this habit to inquisitiveness. Endeavour occasionally to miss hearing or seeing things which concern yourself. When something happens at home, and a person wishes to tell you of it, put the matter off; and when things have been said which appear to affect yourself, refuse to hear them. Remember how Oedipus was brought into the direst disasters by over-curiosity. Finding he was no Corinthian, but an alien, he set to work "C" to discover who he was, and so he met with Laius. He killed him, married his own mother, with the throne for dowry, and then, while apparently blessed by fortune, began his search once more. The endeavours of his wife to prevent him only made him question still more closely, and in the most peremptory way, the old man who was in the secret. And at last, when circumstances are already bringing him to suspect, and the old man cries:

he is nevertheless in such a blaze or spasm of passion that he replies:

"D" So bitter-sweet, so uncontrollable, is the excitement of curiosity—like the tickling of a wound, at which one tears till he makes it bleed. Meanwhile if we are free from that malady, and mild by nature, we shall ignore a disagreeable thing and say:

We must therefore train ourselves to this end. If a letter is brought to us, we must not show all that hurry and eagerness to open it which most people display, when they bite the fastenings through with their teeth, if their hands are too slow. When a messenger arrives from somewhere or other, we must not run to meet him, nor get up from our seats. If a friend "E" says, ‘I have something new to tell you,’ let us reply: ‘Better, if you have something useful or profitable.’ When I was once lecturing at Rome, the famous Rusticus—who was afterwards put to death by Domitian out of jealousy at his reputation—was among my hearers. A soldier came through the audience and handed him a note from the emperor. There was a hush, and I made a pause, to allow of his reading the letter. This, however, he refused to do, nor would he open it, until I had finished my discourse and the audience broke up. The incident caused universal admiration at his dignified behaviour.

But when one feeds his inquisitiveness upon permissible material until he makes it robust and headstrong, he no longer "F" finds it easy to master, when force of habit urges it towards forbidden ground. Such persons will stealthily open their friends’ missives, will push their way into a confidential meeting, will get a view of rites which it is an impiety to see, will tread in hallowed places, and will pry into the doings and sayings of a king.

Now with a despot—who is compelled to know everything—there is nothing that makes him so detested as the crew known as his ‘ears’ and ‘jackals’. ‘Listeners’ were first instituted by Darius the Younger, who had no confidence in himself and looked upon every one with fear and suspicion. ‘Jackals’ were "523" the creation of the Dionysii, who distributed them among the people of Syracuse. Naturally, when the revolution came, these were the first to be seized and cudgelled to death by the Syracusans.

Blackmailers and informers are a breed belonging to the Busybody clan; they are members of the family. But, whereas the informer looks to see if his neighbours have done or plotted any mischief, the busybody brings to book and drags into public even the misfortunes for which they are not responsible. It is said that the outcast derived his name of aliterios in the first instance from being a busybody. It appears that when a severe famine once occurred at Athens, and when those who were in possession of wheat, instead of bringing it in to the public "B" stock, used to grind it (alein) secretly by night in their houses, certain persons, who went round watching for the noise of the mills, were in consequence called aliterioi. It was in the same way, we are told, that the informer won his name of sukophantes. The export of figs (suka) being prohibited, those who gave information (phainein) and impeached the offenders were called sukophantai. Busybodies would do well to reflect upon this fact. It may make them ashamed of the family likeness between their own practices and those of a class which is a special object of loathing and anger.