ive, and to
perpetuate their species, of course; but those two wishes alone
evidently do not carry any race far. In addition to these, a race, to
be great, needs some hunger, some itch, to spur it up the hard path we
lately have learned to call evolution. The love of toil in the ants,
and of craft in cats, are examples (imaginary or not). What other such
lust could exert great driving force?

With us is it curiosity? endless interest in one's environment?

Many animals have some curiosity, but "some" is not enough; and in but
few is it one of the master passions. By a master passion, I mean a
passion that is really your master: some appetite which habitually, day
in, day out, makes its subjects forget fatigue or danger, and sacrifice
their ease to its gratification. That is the kind of hold that
curiosity has on the monkeys.

_NINE_

Imagine a prehistoric prophet observing these beings, and forecasting
what kind of civilizations their descendants would build. Anyone could
have foreseen certain parts of the simians' history: could have guessed
that their curiosity would unlock for them, one by one, nature's doors,
and--idly--bestow on them stray bits of valuable knowledge: could have
pictured them spreading inquiringly all over the globe, stumbling on
their inventions--and idly passing on and forgetting them.

To have to learn the same thing over and over again wastes the time of
a race. But this is continually necessary, with simians, because of
their disorder. "Disorder," a prophet would have sighed: "that is one
of their handicaps; one that they will never get rid of, whatever it
costs. Having so much curiosity makes a race scatter-brained.

"Yes," he would have dismally continued, "it will be a queer mixture:
these simians will attain to vast stores of knowledge, in time, that is
plain. But after spending centuries groping to discover some art, in
after-centuries they will now and then find it's forgotten. How
incredible it would seem on other planets to hear of lost arts.

"There is a strong streak of triviality in them, which you don't see in
cats. They won't have fine enough characters to concentrate on the
things of most weight. They will talk and think far more of trifles
than of what is important. Even when they are reasonably civilized,
this will be so. Great discoveries sometimes will fail to be heard of,
because too much else is; and many will thus disappear, and these men
will not know it."[