Birds of prey

Hastings: More pity that the eagles should be mewed,

Whiles kites and buzzards prey at liberty.

Richard: The world is grown so bad

That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.

Shakespeare, Richard III

Limits of scientific scopophilia

In medical training you are accustomed to see things. You see an anatomical preparation, the precipitate of a chemical reaction, the shortening of a muscle as a result of the stimulation of its nerves. . . . In psycho-analysis, alas, everything is different. Nothing takes place in a psycho-analytic treatment but  an interchange of words between the patient and the analyst. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences and his present impressions, complains, confesses to his wishes and his emotional impulses. The doctor listens, tries to direct the patient’s processes of thought, exhorts, forces his attention in certain directions, gives him explanations and observes the reactions of understanding or rejection which he in this way provokes in him.

Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Lecture I.

Sophocles

Alas, how terrible is wisdom when
it brings no profit to the man that's wise! -- Teiresias

Sophocles, Oedipus the King