5
What escape is there, then, from this vice? By a process of shifting and diverting our inquisitiveness, as has been said,In 515 d, supra. and, if possible, by turning the soul to better and more pleasant subjects. Direct your curiosity to heavenly things and things on earth, in the air, in the sea. Are you by nature fond of small or of great spectacles? If of great ones, apply your curiosity to the sun: where does it set and whence does it rise? Inquire into the changes in the moon, as you would into those of a human being: what becomes of all the light she has spent and from what source did she regain it, how does it happen that When out of darkness first she comes anew, She shows her face increasing fair and full; And when she reaches once her brightest sheen, Again she wastes away and comes to naught?Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 315, Sophocles, Frag. 787 (871 ed. Pearson); the full quotation may be found in Life of Demetrius, xlv. (911 c-d). Cf. also Moralia, 282 b. And these are secrets of Nature, yet Nature is not vexed with those who find them out. Or suppose you have renounced great things. Then turn your curiosity to smaller ones: how are some plants always blooming and green and rejoicing in the display of their wealth at every season, while others are sometimes like these, but at other times, like a human spendthrift, they squander all at once their abundance and are left bare and beggared? Why, again, do some plants produce elongated fruits, others angular, and still others round and globular?
