some people who, for the sake of satisfying a purposeless curiosity, will ask questions which they know it cannot be agreeable to answer.  In all cases, curiosity of this kind is evidence of want of real refinement, and is a breach of the finer rules of social morality; but, when the questions asked are intended to extract, directly or indirectly, unwilling information on a man’s private life or circumstances, they assume the character of sheer vulgarity.  A man’s private affairs, providing his conduct of them does not injuriously affect society, are no one’s business but his own, and much pain and vexation of the smaller kind would be saved, if this very plain fact were duly recognised in social intercourse.

It may be noticed in passing, that there still lingers on in society a minor form of persecution, a sort of inquisition on a small scale, which consists in attempting to extract from a man a frank statement of his religious, social, or political opinions, though it is known or suspected all the time, that, if he responds to the invitation, it will be to his social or material disadvantage.  In cases of this kind, it becomes a casuistical question how far a man is called on to disclose his real sentiments at the bidding of any impertinent questioner.  That the free expression of opinion should be attended with this danger is, of course, a proof how far removed we still are from perfect intellectual toleration.

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.