Unsightly, stranger, are the sights within,
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:
Thereon the Aenean driver’s hard-mouthed colts
Break from control.
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.