THE COLLECTED WORKS OF THORSTEIN VEBLEN: Business Theories, Economic Articles & Essays. Thorstein Veblen
its own working, and yet in the long run to overcome them. In part this discrepancy in the outcome arises from the fact that the sense of workmanship affords a norm of systematisation for the facts that come into knowledge. This leads to something like a dramatisation of the facts, whereby they fall into some sort of a sequence of conduct among them-selves, become personalised, are conceived as gifted with discrimination, inclinations, preferences and initiative; and in so far as the facts are conceived to be involved in immaterial or hyperphysical relations of this character they cannot effectually be made use of for the purposes of technology. All conceptions that exceed the scope of material fact are useless for technology, and in so far as such conceptions are intruded into the body of information drawn on by the workman they become obstructive.
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 predisposi-tions 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 workmanship, may be momentarily thrust aside by more urgent interests, yet its long-term effects in human culture are very considerable. Men will commonly make easy terms with their curiosity when there is a call to action under the spur of a more elemental need, and even when circumstances appear to be favourable to its untroubled functioning a sustained and consistent response to its incitement is by no means an assured consequence. The common man does not eagerly pursue the quest of the idle curiosity, and neither its guidance nor its award of fact is mandatory on him.54 Sporadic individuals who are endowed with this supererogatory gift largely in excess of the common run, or who yield to its enticements with very exceptional abandon, are accounted dreamers, or in extreme cases their more sensible neighbours may even rate them as of unsound mind. But the long-term consequences of the common run of curiosity, helped out by such sporadic individuals in whom the idle curiosity runs at a higher tension, counts up finally, because cumulatively, into the most substantial cultural achievement of the race, - its systematised knowledge and quasi-knowledge of things.
This instinctive curiosity, then, comes in now and again serviceably to accelerate the gain in technological insight by bringing in material information that may be turned to account, as well as by persistently disturbing the habitual body of knowledge on which workmanship draws.
Human curiosity is doubtless an “idle” propensity, in the sense that no utilitarian aim enters in its habitual exercise; but the material information which is by this means drawn into the agent’s available knowledge may none the less come to serve the ends of workmanship. A good share of the facts taken cognisance of under the spur of curiosity is of no effect for workmanship or for technological insight, and that any of it should be found serviceable is substantially a fortuitous circumstance.
This character of “idleness,” the absence of a utilitarian aim or utilitarian sentiment in the impulse of curiosity, is doubtless a great part of the reason for its having received such scant and rather slighting treatment at the hands of the psychologists and of the students of civilisation alike.
Of the material so offered as knowledge, or fact, workmanship makes use of whatever is available. In ways already indicated this utilisation of ascertained “facts” is both furthered and hindered by the fact that the information which comes to hand through the restless curiosity of man is reduced to systematic shape, for the most part or wholly, under canons of workmanship. For the large generality of human knowledge this will mean that the raw material of observed fact is selectively worked over, connected up and accumulated on lines of a putative teleological order of things, cast in something like a dramatic form. From which it follows that the knowledge so gained is held and carried over from generation to generation in a form which lends itself with facility to a workmanlike manipulation; it is already digested for assimilation in a scheme of teleology that instinctively commends itself to the workmanlike sense of fitness. But it also follows that in so far as the personalised, teleological, or dramatic order so imputed to the facts does not, by chance, faithfully reflect the causal relations subsisting among these facts, the utilisation of them as technological elements will amount to a borrowing of trouble. So that the concurrence of curiosity and workmanship in the assimilation of facts in this way may, and in early culture must, result in a retardation of the technological advance, as contrasted with what might conceivably have been the outcome of this work of the idle curiosity if it had not been congenitally contaminated with the sense of workmanship and thereby lent itself to conceptions of magical efficacy rather than to mechanical efficiency.55 The further bearing of the parental bent on the early growth of technology also merits attention in this connection. This instinct and the sentiments that arise out of its promptings will have had wide and free play in early times, when the common good of the group was still perforce the chief economic interest in the habitual view of all its members. It will have had an immediate effect on the routine of life and work, presumably far beyond what is to be looked for at any later stage. In the time when pecuniary competition had not yet become an institution, grounded in the ownership of goods in severalty and on their competitive consumption, the promptings of this instinct will have been more insistent and will have met with a more unguarded response than later on, after these institutional changes have taken effect. A manifest and inveterate distaste of waste, in great part traceable on analysis to this instinct, still persistently comes in evidence in all communities, although it is greatly disguised and distorted by the principles of conspicuous waste56 among all those peoples that have adopted private ownership of goods; and serviceability to the common good likewise never ceases to command at least a genial, speculative approval from the common run of men, though this, too, may often take some grotesque or nugatory form due to preconceptions of a pecuniary kind. This bias for serviceability and against waste falls in directly with the promptings of the instinct of workmanship, so that these two instinctive predispositions will reënforce one another in conducing to an impersonally economical use of materials and resources as well as to the full use of workmanlike capacities, and to an