But in good part the discrepancies of the outcome are due to complications with an instinctive curiosity, the presence of which has tacitly been assumed throughout the argument,--an “idle” curiosity by force of which men, more or less insistently, want to know things, when graver interests do not engross their attention. Comparatively little has been made of this instinctive propensity by the students of culture, though the fact of its presence in human nature is broadly recognised by psychologists,[52] and the like penchant comes in evidence among the lower animals, as appears in many investigations of animal behaviour.[53] Indeed, it has been taken somewhat lightly, in a general way, as being a genial infirmity of human nature rather than a creative factor in civilisation. And the reason of its being dealt with in so slight a manner is probably to be found in the nature of the instinct itself. With the instinct of workmanship it shares that character of pliancy and tractability common in some degree to the whole range of instincts, and especially characteristic of those instinctive predispositions that distinguish human nature from the simpler and more refractory spiritual endowment of the lower animals. Like the other instinctive propensities, it is to be presumed, the idle curiosity takes effect only within the bounds of that metabolic margin of surplus energy that comes in evidence in all animal life, but that appears in larger proportions in the “higher” animals and in a peculiarly obtrusive manner in the life of man. It seems to be only after the demands of the simpler, more immediately organic functions, such as nutrition, growth and reproduction, have been met in some passably sufficient measure that this vaguer range of instincts which constitutes the spiritual predispositions of man can effectually draw on the energies of the organism and so can go into effect in what is recognised as human conduct. The wider the margin of disposable energy, therefore, the more freely should the characteristically human predispositions assert their sway, and the more nearly this metabolic margin is drained by the elemental needs of the organism the less chance should there be that conduct will be guided by what may properly be called the spiritual needs of man. It is accordingly characteristic of this whole range of vaguer and less automatically determinate predispositions that they transiently yield somewhat easily to the pressure of circumstances. This is eminently true of the idle curiosity, as it is also true in a somewhat comparable degree of the sense of workmanship. But these instincts at the same time, and perhaps by the same fact, have also the other concomitant and characteristically human trait of a ubiquitous resiliency whenever and in so far as there is nothing to hinder. Their staying power is, in a way, very great, though their driving force is neither massive nor intractable. So that even though the idle curiosity, like the sense of