Impertinent curiosity is offensive, not only because it shews an indifference to the feelings of the person questioned, but because it savours of gratuitous interference in his affairs. This quality it shares with another of the minor social vices, the tendering of unasked for advice, or, in brief, impertinent advice. There are certain circumstances and relations in which men have the right, even if they are not under the obligation, to give unsolicited advice, as where a man is incurring an unknown danger or foregoing some unsuspected advantage, or to their servants, or children, or wards, or pupils; but, in all these cases, either the special circumstance or the special relation implies superiority of knowledge or superiority of position on the part of the person tendering the advice, and to assume this superiority, where it does not plainly exist, is an act of impertinence. Just as the assumption of superiority wounds a man's self-respect, so does the disposition to meddle in his affairs, which is generally founded on that assumption, affect his sense of independence, and, hence, an act which includes both grounds of offence seems to be a peculiarly legitimate object of resentment. The lesson of letting other people alone is one which men are slow to learn, though there are few who, in their own case, do not resent any attack on their liberty of judgment or action. This is emphatically one of the cases in which we should try to put ourselves in the place of others, and act to them as we would that they should act towards us.