Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/156

134 and history of evil matters, thou hast work enough iwis at home, thou shalt find plenty thereof within to occupy thyself:

For look what water runs along An isthmus or isle we see, Or leaves lie spread about the oak, Which numbered cannot be.

Such a multitude shalt thou find of sins in thy life, of passions in thy soul, and of oversights in thy duties. For like as Xenophon saith, That good stewards of an household have one proper room by itself for those utensils or implements which serve for sacrifice; another for vessel that cometh to the table; in one place he layeth up the instruments and tools for tillage and husbandry, and in another apart from the rest he bestoweth weapons, armour and furniture for the wars; even so shalt thou see within thyself a number of manifold vices how they are digested: some proceeding from envy, others from jealousy; some from idleness, others from niggardise: take account of these (I advise thee), survey and peruse them over well: shut all the doors and windows that yield prospect unto thy neighbours: stop up the avenues that give access and passage to curiosity: But set open all other doors that lead into thine own bed-chamber, and other lodgings for men, into thy wife's cabinet and the nursery, into the rooms where thy servants keep: There shalt thou meet wherewith to amuse and busy thyself: there may curiosity and desire to know everything be employed in exercises neither unprofitable nor malicious: nay, in such as be commodious, wholesome and tending to salvation: namely, whiles every one calleth himself to account, saying thus:

Where have I done, what good I have done. Or what have I misdone? Where have I slipt, what duty begun Is left by me undone?

But now, according as fables make report, that Lamia the witch, whiles she is at home is stark blind, and doth nothing but sing, having her eyes shut up close within a little box; but when she means to go abroad she takes them forth, and setteth them in their right place, and seeth well enough with them; even so, every one of us when we go forth, set unto that evil meaning and intention which we have to others, an eye to look into them, and that is curiosity and over-much meddling; but in our own errors, faults and trespasses we stumble and fail through ignorance, as having neither eyes to see, nor light about them