The most effective way, however, of preventing this weakness is to form a habit—to begin at an early stage and train ourselves systematically to acquire the necessary self-control. It is by habit that the vice increases, the advance of the disease being gradual. How this is, we shall see, in discussing the proper method of practice. Let us make a beginning with comparatively trifling and insignificant matters. On the roads it can be no difficult matter to abstain from reading [Sidenote: E] the inscriptions on the tombs. Nor in the promenades can there be any hardship in refusing to let the eye linger upon the writings on the walls. You have only to tell yourself that they contain nothing useful or entertaining. There is A expressing his ‘kind sentiments’ towards B; So-and-So described as ‘the best of friends’; and much mere twaddle of the same kind. No doubt it seems as if the reading of them does you no harm; but harm you it does, without your knowing it, by inducing a habit of inquiring into things which do not concern you. Hunters do not permit young hounds to turn aside and [Sidenote: F] follow up every scent, but pull them sharply back with the leash, so as to keep their power of smell in perfectly clean condition for their proper work, and make it stick more keenly to the tracks: _With nostril a-search for the trail that the beast gives forth from its body_. The same watchfulness must be shown in suppressing, or in diverting to useful ends, the tendency of an inquisitive person to run off the track and wander after everything that he can see or hear. An eagle or a lion gathers its talons in when it [Sidenote: 521] walks, so as not to wear the sharp edge from their tips. Similarly let us treat the inquiring spirit as the keen edge to our love of learning, and refrain from wasting or blunting it upon objects of no value. In the next place let us train ourselves, when passing another’s door, to refrain from looking in, or from letting our inquisitive gaze clutch at what is passing inside. Xenocrates said—and we shall do well to keep the remark in mind—that whether we set foot or set eyes in another man’s house makes no difference. Not only is such prying unfair and improper; we get no pleasure from the spectacle. _Unsightly, stranger, are the sights within_,