§ XII. Next let us accustom ourselves when we pass a strange house not to look inside at the door, or curiously inspect the interior, as if we were going to pilfer something, remembering always that saying of Xenocrates, that it is all one whether one puts one's feet or eyes in another person's house. For such prying is neither honourable, nor comely, nor even agreeable.
"Stranger, thou'lt see within untoward sights."
For such is generally the condition inside houses, utensils kicking about, maids lolling about, no work going on, nothing to please the eye; and moreover such side glances, and stray shots as it were, distort the soul, and are unhandsome, and the practice is a pernicious one. When Diogenes saw Dioxippus, a victor at Olympia, driving up in his chariot and unable to take his eyes off a handsome woman who was watching the procession, but still turning round and casting sheep's eyes at her, he said, "See you yon athlete straining his neck to look at a girl?" And similarly you may see curious people twisting and straining their necks at every spectacle alike, from the habit and practice of turning their eyes in all directions. And I think the senses ought not to rove about, like an ill-trained maid, when sent on an errand by the soul, but to do their business, and then return quickly with the answer, and afterwards to keep within the bounds of reason, and obey her behests. But it is like those lines of Sophocles,
"Then did the Ænianian's horses bolt, Unmanageable quite;"[628]
for so the senses not having, as we said, right training and practice, often run away, and drag reason along with them, and plunge her into unlawful excesses. And so, though that story about Democritus is false, that he purposely destroyed his eyesight by the reflection from burning-glasses (as people sometimes shut up windows that look into the street), that they might not disturb him by frequently calling off his attention to external things, but allow him to confine himself to purely intellectual matters, yet it is very true in every case that those who use the mind most are least acted upon by the senses. And so the philosophers erected their places for study as far as possible from towns, and called Night the time propitious to thought,[629] thinking quiet and withdrawal from worldly distractions a great help towards meditating upon and solving the problems of life.