672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that attention may be followed by approach and exploration by nostril, 

 lips, or touch. Curiosity and fear form a couple of antagonistic emo- 

 tions liable to be awakened by the same outward thing, and manifestly 

 both useful to their possessor. The spectacle of their alternation is 

 often amusing enough, as in the timid approaches and scared wheel- 

 ings which sheep or cattle will make in the presence of some new 

 object they are investigating. I have seen alligators in the water act 

 in precisely the same way toward a man seated on the beach in front 

 of them gradually drawing near as long as he kept still, frantically 

 careering back as soon as he made a movement. Inasmuch as new 

 objects may always be advantageous, it is better that an animal 

 should not absolutely fear them. But, inasmuch as tbey may also 

 possibly be harmful, it is better that he should not be quite indifferent 

 to them either, but on the whole remaining on the qui vive, ascertain 

 as much about them, and what they may be likely to bring forth, as 

 he can, before settling down to rest in their presence. Some such 

 susceptibility for being excited and irritated by the mere novelty, as 

 such, of any movable feature of the environment must form the in- 

 stinctive basis of all human curiosity ; though, of course, the super- 

 structure absorbs contributions from so many other factors of the 

 emotional life that the original root may be hard to find. "With what 

 is called scientific curiosity, and with metaphysical wonder, the prac- 

 tical instinctive root has probably nothing to do. The stimuli here 

 are not objects, but ways of conceiving objects, and the emotions and 

 actions they give rise to are to be classed, with many other a?sthetic 

 manifestations, sensitive and motor, as incidental features of our mental 

 life. The philosophic brain responds to an inconsistency or a gap in its 

 knowledge, just as the musical brain responds to a discord in what it 

 hears. At certain ages the sensitiveness to particular gaps and the 

 pleasure of resolving particular puzzles reach their maximum, and then 

 it is that stores of knowledge are easiest and most naturally laid in. 

 But these effects may have had nothing to do with the uses for which 

 the brain was originally given ; and it is probably only within a few 

 centuries, since religious beliefs and economic applications of science 

 have played a prominent part in the conflicts of one race with another, 

 that they may have helped to " select " for survival a particular type 

 of brain. I shall have to consider this matter of incidental and su- 

 pernumerary faculties in another place. 



Sociability and Shyness. As a gregarious animal, man is ex- 

 cited both by the absence and by the presence of his kind. To be 

 alone is one of the greatest of evils for him. Solitary confinement is 

 by many regarded as a mode of torture too cruel and unnatural for civ- 

 ilized countries to adopt. To one long pent up on a desert island, the 

 sight of a human footprint or a human form in the distance would be 

 the most tumultuously exciting of experiences. In morbid states of 

 mind, one of the commonest symptoms is the fear of being alone. This 



