OF CURIOSITY
THE SUMMARY
[The former treatise hath shewed unto us how many mischiefs and inconveniences anger causeth, teaching us the means how to beware of it. Now Plutarch dealeth with another vice, no less dangerous than it, which bendeth to the opposite extremity. For whereas ire doth so bereave a man of the use of reason during the access and fit thereof, that the choleric and furious persons differ not one from another, but in the space of time. This curiosity which now is in hand, being masked under the name of wisdom and hability of spirit, is (to say a truth) a covert and hidden fury, which carrieth the mind of the curious person past himself, for to gather and heap from all parts the ordure and filthiness of another, and afterwards to bring the same into himself, and to make thereof a very storehouse, for to infect his own self first, and then others, according as the malignity and malice, the follies, backbiting, and slanders of these curious folk do sufficiently declare. To the end, therefore, that every man who loveth virtue should divert from such a malady, our author sheweth that the principal remedy for to preserve us from it, is to turn this curiosity to our own selves; namely, to examine our own persons more diligently than others. Which point he amplifieth by setting down on the contrary side the blindness of those who are over-busy and curious. Then cometh he to declare why a curious person goeth forth always out of his own house for to enter into another man's; to wit, because of his own filthiness, which by that means he cannot smell and perceive; but whiles he will needs go to stir and rake into the life of others, he snareth and entangleth himself, and so perisheth in his own folly and indiscretion. Afterwards proceeding to prescribe the remedies for the cure of curiosity, when he had deciphered the villanies and indignities thereof, together with the nature of curious persons, and the enormous vices which accompany them, he requireth at our hands that we should not be desirous to know things which be vile, base, lewd or unprofitable; that we should hold in our eyes, and not cast them at random and adventure within the house of another, that we should not seek after the bruit and rumours that are spread in meetings and companies; that we otherwhiles should forbear even such things whereof the use is lawful and permitted: also to take heed that we do not enter nor sound too deep into our own affairs; Finally, not to be rash and heady in those things that we do, be they never so small. All these points premised, he adorneth with inductions, similitudes and choice examples, and knitteth up all with one conclusion, which proveth that curious folk ought to be ranged among the most mischievous and dangerous persons in the world.]
