Plutarch De curiositate 2

[2] But as it is, like the Lamia in the fable, who, they say, when at home sleeps in blindness with her eyes stored away in a jar, but when she goes abroad puts in her eyes and can see, so each one of us, in our dealings with others abroad, puts his meddlesomeness, like an eye, into his maliciousness; but we are often tripped up by our own faults and vices by reason of our ignorance of them, since we provide ourselves with no sight or light by which to inspect them. Therefore the busybody is also more useful to his enemies than to himself, ¹ for he rebukes and drags out their faults and demonstrates to them what they should avoid or correct, but he neglects the greater part of his own domestic errors through his passionate interest in those abroad. So Odysseus ² refused to converse even with his mother until he had learned from the seer ³ the matters by reason of which he had come to the House of Hades; and when he had his answer, he both turned to his mother and also made inquiries of the other women, ⁴ asking who was Tyro, who the beautiful Chloris, why Epicaste met her death But we, while treating our own affairs with considerable laxity and ignorance and neglect, pry into the pedigrees of the rest of the world: our neighbour’s grandfather was a Syrian and his grandmother a Thracian ⁶ ; so-and-so owes three talents and has not paid the interest. We inquire also into such matters as where so-and-so’s wife was coming back from, ⁷ and what A and B’s private conversation in the corner was about. Yet Socrates went about seeking to solve the question of what arguments Pythagoras used to carry conviction; and Aristippus, when he met Ischomachus at Olympia, asked him by what manner of conversation Socrates succeeded in so affecting the young men. And when Aristippus had gleaned a few odd seeds and samples of Socrates’ talk, he was so moved that he suffered a physical collapse and became quite pale and thin. Finally he sailed for Athens and slaked his burning thirst with draughts from the fountain-head, and engaged in a study of the man and his words and his philosophy, of which the end and aim was to come to recognize one’s own vices and so rid oneself of them.

[2] But now, as the poets feign concerning Lamia, that upon her going to bed she lays aside her eyes among the attirements of her dressing-box, and is at home for the most part blind and drowsy too, and puts on her eyes only when she goes abroad a gadding; so it is with most men, who, through a kind of an affected ignorance and artificial blindness, commonly blunder and stumble at their own threshold, are the greatest strangers to their own personal defects, and of all others least familiarly acquainted with their own domestic ills and follies. But when they look abroad, their sight is sharpened with all the watchful and laborious curiosity imaginable, which serves as deforming spectacles to an evil eye, that is already envenomed by the malignity of a worse nature.

And hence it is, that a person of this busy meddlesome disposition is a greater friend to them he hates than to himself; for overlooking his own concerns, through his being so heedfully intent on those of other men, he reproves and exposes their miscarriages, admonishes them of the errors and follies they ought to correct, and affrights them into greater caution for the future; so that not only the careless and unwary, but even the more sober and prudent persons, may gain no small advantage from the im pertinence and ill-nature of inquisitive people.

It was a remarkable instance of the prudence of Ulysses, that, going into the regions of departed souls, he would not exchange so much as one word with his mother there till he had first obtained an answer from the oracle and despatched the business he came about; and then, turning to her, he afforded some small time for a few impertinent questions about the other women upon the place, asking which was Tyro, and which the fair Chloris, and concerning the unfortunate Epicasta, why, But we through extreme sloth and ignorance, being stupidly careless of our own affairs, must be idly spending our time and talk either about our neighbor’s pedigree, how that such a one had a tapster for his grandfather, and that his grandmother was a laundress; or that another owes three or four talents, and is not able to pay the interest. Nay, and such trivial stuff as this we busy ourselves about,—where such a man’s wife has been all this while; and what it was, that this and the other fellow have been talking of in a corner. But the wise Socrates employed his curiosity to better purpose, when he went about enquiring by what excellent precepts Pythagoras obtained so great authority among his followers; and Aristippus, meeting Ischomachus at the Olympic games, asked him what those notions were with which Socrates had so powerfully charmed the minds of his young scholars; upon the slight information whereof, he was so passionately inflamed with a desire of going to Athens, that he grew pale and lean, and almost languished till he came to drink of the fountain itself, and had been acquainted with the person of Socrates, and more fully learned that philosophy of his, the design of which was to teach men how to discover their own ills and apply proper remedies to them.