(2) The instinct of inquiry.  No more predominating trait proclaims itself in the child than the instinct of inquiry.  Every grown-up realizes his habit of asking questions, which trait Kipling has idealized delightfully in The Elephant’s Child.  We know also that the folk-tale in its earliest beginnings was the result of primitive man’s curiosity toward the actual physical world about him, its sun and sky, its mountain and its sea.  The folk-tale therefore is the living embodiment of the child’s instinct of inquiry permanently recorded in the adventures and surprises of the folk-tale characters.  And because the folk-tale is so pervaded with this quest of the ages in search of truth, and because the child by nature is so deeply imitative, the folk-tale inherently possesses an educational value to stir and feed original impulses of investigation and experiment.  This is a value which is above and beyond its more apparent uses.

In the creative reaction to be expected from the child’s use of fairy tales the expression of this instinct of investigation unites with the instinct of conversation, the instinct of construction, and the instinct of artistic expression.  In fact, it is the essence of creative reaction in any form, whether in the domain of the Industrial Shop, the Domestic Science Kitchen, the Household Arts’ Sewing-Room, or the Fine Arts’ Studio.  To do things and then see what happens, is both the expression of this instinct and the basis of any creative return the child makes through his handling of the fairy tale.  In the formation of a little play such as is given on page 149, the instinct of conversation is expressed in the talk of the Trees to the little Bird.  But this talk of the Trees also expresses doing things to see what happens; each happening to the Bird, each reply of a Tree to the Bird, influences each successive doing of the Bird.  After the Story of Medio Pollito all the child’s efforts of making Little Half-Chick into a weathervane and of fixing the directions to his upright shaft, will be expressions of the search for the unknown, of the instinct of experiment.  After the story of The Little Elves, the dance of the Elves to the accompaniment of music will represent an expression of the artistic instinct; but it also represents expression of the instinct for the new and the untried.  After the dance is finished the child has seen himself do something he had not done before.  This union of the instinct of inquiry with that of artistic expression shows itself most completely in the entire dramatization of a fairy tale.