If a house is stuffy, dark, chilly, or unhealthy, it is perhaps
[Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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.
_Why so sharp-eyed, my most malignant Sir,
For others’ faults, yet overlook your own?_
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.
[Sidenote: *] _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.
[Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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:
_How have I err’d? What deed have I done? What duty neglected?_
As it is, we are all of us like the Lamia in the fable, of whom
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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
_Tying a sheer-hung noose from the height of the lofty roof-tree_.
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 [Sidenote: 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
[Sidenote: 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
_Where so appeareth, mayhap, one barley-grain in a dunghill._
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, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 517] her bacchic revels, her dances, and
her all-night festivals.