Plutarch's Morals
diffusion all over the earth of the sun's rays, impudently attempt to
gaze at its orb and penetrate to its light. And so that was a wise
answer of Philippides the Comic Poet, when King Lysimachus asked him on
one occasion, "What would you like to have of mine?" "Anything, O king,
but your secrets." For the pleasantest and finest things to be got from
kings are public, as banquets, and riches, and festivities, and favours:
but come not near any secret of theirs, pry not into it. There is no
concealment of the joy of a prosperous monarch, or of his laugh when he
is in a playful mood, or of any tokens of his goodwill and favour; but
dreadful is what he conceals, his gloominess, his sternness, his
reserve, his store of latent wrath, his meditation on stern revenge, his
jealousy of his wife, or suspicion of his son, or doubt about the
fidelity of a friend. Flee from this cloud that is so black and
threatening, for when its hidden fury bursts forth, you will not fail to
hear its thunder and see its lightning.
Sec. V. How shall you flee from it? Why, by dissipating and distracting
your curiosity, by turning your soul to better and pleasanter objects:
examine the phenomena of sky, and earth, and air, and sea. Are you by
nature fond of gazing at little or great things? If at great, turn your
attention to the sun, consider its rising and setting: view the changes
of the moon, like the changes of our mortal life, see how it waxes and
wanes,
"How at the first it peers out small and dim
Till it unfolds its full and glorious Orb,
And when its zenith it has once attained,
Again it wanes, grows small, and disappears."[616]
These are indeed Nature's secrets, but they bring no trouble on those
that study them. But if you decline the study of great things, inspect
with curiosity smaller matters, see how some plants flourish, are green
and gay, and exhibit their beauty, all the year round, while others are
sometimes gay like them, at other times, like some unthrift, run through
their resources entirely, and are left bare and naked. Consider again
their various shapes, how some produce oblong fruits, others angular,
others smooth and round. But perhaps you will not care to pry into all
this, since you will find nothing bad. If you must then ever bestow your
time and attention on what is bad, as the serpent lives but in deadly
matter, go to history, and turn your eye on the sum total of human
misery. For there you will find "the falls of men, and murders of their
lives,"[617] rapes of women, attacks of slaves, treachery of friends,
mixing of poisons, envyings, jealousies, "shipwrecks of families," and
dethroning of princes. Sate and cloy yourself on these, you will by so
doing vex and enrage none of your associates.
Sec. VI. But it seems curiosity does not rejoice in stale evils, but only
in fresh and recent ones, gladly viewing the spectacle of tragedies of
yesterday, but backward in taking part in comic and festive scenes. And
so the curious person is a languid and listless hearer to the narrator
of a marriage, or sacrifice, or solemn procession, he says he has heard
most of all that before, bids the narrator cut it short and come to the
point; but if his visitor tell him of the violation of some girl, or the
adultery of some married woman, or the disputes and intended litigation
of brothers, he doesn't go to sleep then, nor pretend want of leisure,
"But he pricks up his ears, and asks for more."
And indeed those lines,
"Alas! how quicker far to mortals' ears
Do ill news travel than the news of good!"
are truly said of curious people. For as cupping-glasses take away the
worst blood, so the ears of curious people attract only the worst
reports; or rather, as cities have certain ominous and gloomy gates,
through which they conduct only condemned criminals, or convey filth and
night soil, for nothing pure or holy has either ingress into or egress
from them, so into the ears of curious people goes nothing good or
elegant, but tales of murders travel and lodge there, wafting a whiff of
unholy and obscene narrations.
"And ever in my house is heard alone
The sound of wailing;"
this is to the curious their one Muse and Siren, this the sweetest note
they can hear. For curiosity desires to know what is hidden and secret;
but no one conceals his good fortune, nay sometimes people even pretend
to have such advantages as they do not really possess. So the curious
man, eager to hear a history of what is bad, is possessed by the passion
of malignity, which is brother to envy and jealousy. For envy is pain at
another's blessings, and malignity is joy at another's misfortunes: and
both proceed from the same savage and brutish vice, ill-nature.
Sec. VII. But so unpleasant is it to everybody to have his private ills
brought to light, that many have died rather than acquaint the doctors
with their secret ailments. For suppose Herophilus, or Erasistratus, or
even AEsculapius himself during his sojourn on earth, had gone with their
drugs and surgical instruments from house to house, to inquire what man
had a fistula in ano, or what woman had a cancer in her womb;--and yet
their curiosity would have been professional[618]--who would not have
driven them away from their house, for not waiting till they were sent
for, and for coming without being asked to spy out their neighbours'
ailments? But curious people pry into these and even worse matters, not
from a desire to heal them, but only to expose them to others, which
makes them deservedly hated. For we are not vexed and mortified with
custom-house officers when they levy toll on goods _bona fide_ imported,
but only when they seek for contraband articles, and rip up bags and
packages: and yet the law allows them to do even this, and sometimes it
is injurious to them not to do so. But curious people abandon and
neglect their own affairs, and are busy about their neighbours'
concerns. Seldom do they go into the country, for they do not care for
its quiet and stillness and solitude, but if once in a way they do go
there, they look more at their neighbours' vines than their own, and
inquire how many cows of their neighbour have died, or how much of his
wine has turned sour, and when they are satisfied on these points they
soon return to town again. But the genuine countryman does not willingly
listen to any rumour that chances to come from the town, for he quotes
the following lines,
"Even with spade in hand he'll tell the terms
On which peace was concluded: all these things
The cursed fellow walks about and pries into."
Sec. VIII. But curious people shun the country as stale and dull and too
quiet, and push into warehouses and markets and harbours, asking, "Any
news? Were you not in the market in the forenoon?" and sometimes
receiving for answer, "What then? Do you think things in the town change
every three hours?" Notwithstanding if anyone brings any news, he'll get
off his horse, and embrace him, and kiss him, and stand to listen. If
however the person who meets him says he has no news, he will say
somewhat peevishly, "No news, Sir? Have you not been in the market? Did
you not pass by the officers' quarters? Did you exchange no words with
those that have just arrived from Italy?" To stop such people the
Locrian authorities had an excellent rule; they fined everyone coming
from abroad who asked what the news was. For as cooks pray for plenty of
meat, and fishmongers for shoals of fish, so curious people pray for
shoals of trouble, and plenty of business, and innovations and changes,
that they may have something to hunt after and tittle-tattle about. Well
also was it in _Charondas_, the legislator of the people of Thurii,[619]
to forbid any of the citizens but adulterers and curious persons to be
ridiculed on the stage. Adultery itself indeed seems to be only the
fruit of curiosity about another man's pleasures, and an inquiring and
prying into things kept close and hidden from the world; while curiosity
is a tampering with and seduction of and revealing the nakedness of
secrets.[620]
Sec. IX. As it is likely that much learning will produce wordiness, and so
Pythagoras enjoined five years' silence on his scholars, calling it a
truce from words,[621] so defamation of character is sure to go with
curiosity. For what people are glad to hear they are glad to talk about,
and what they eagerly pick up from others they joyfully retail to
others. And so, amongst the other mischiefs of curiosity, the disease
runs counter to their desires; for all people fight shy of them, and
conceal their affairs from them, and neither care to do or say anything
in their presence, but defer consultations, and put off investigations,
till such people are out of the way; and if, when some secret is just
about to be uttered, or some important business is just about to be
arranged, some curious man happen to pop in, they are mum at once and
reserved, as one puts away fish if the cat is about; and so frequently
things seen and talked about by all the rest of the world are unknown
only to them. For the same reason the curious person never gets the
confidence of anybody. For we would rather entrust our letters and
papers and seals to slaves and strangers than to curious friends and
intimates. The famous Bellerophon,[622] though he carried letters
against his life, opened them not, but abstained from reading the letter
to the king, as he had refused to sell his honour to Proetus' wife, so
great was his continence.[623] For curiosity and adultery both come from
incontinence, and to the latter is added monstrous folly and insanity.
For to pass by so many common and public women, and to intrude oneself
on some married woman,[624] who is sure to be more costly, and possibly
less pretty to boot, is the acme of madness. Yet such is the conduct of
curious people. They neglect many gay sights, fail to hear much that
would be well worth hearing, lose much fine sport and pastime, to break
open private letters, to put their ears to their neighbour's walls, and
to whisper to their slaves and women-servants, practices always low, and
frequently dangerous.
Sec. X. It will be exceedingly useful, therefore, to deter the curious from
these propensities, for them to remember their past experience.
Simonides used to say that he occasionally opened two chests for rewards
and thanks that he had by him, and found the one full for rewards, but
the one for thanks always empty.[625] So if anyone were to open
occasionally the stores that curiosity had amassed, and observe what a
cargo there was of useless and idle and unlovely things, perhaps the
sight of all this poor stuff would inspire him with disgust. Suppose
someone, in studying the writings of the ancients, were to pick out only
their worst passages, and compile them into a volume, as Homer's
imperfect lines, and the solecisms of the tragedians, and Archilochus'
indecent and bitter railings against women, by which he so exposed
himself, would he not be worthy of the curse of the tragedian,
"Perish, compiler of thy neighbours' ills?"
And independently of such a curse, the piling up of other people's
misdoings is indecent and useless, and like the town which Philip
founded and filled with the vilest and most dissolute wretches, and
called _Rogue Town_. Curious persons, indeed, making a collection of the
faults and errors and solecisms, not of lines or poems but of people's
lives, render their memory a most inelegant and unlovely register of
dark deeds. Just as there are in Rome some people who care nothing for
pictures and statues, or even handsome boys or women exposed for sale,
but haunt the monster-market, and make eager inquiries about people who
have no calves, or three eyes, or arms like weasels, or heads like