The Life of the Bee 



two orders in cases, only too frequent in 

 life, where we suffer our conduct to be in- 

 ferior to our thoughts, where, seeing the 

 good, we follow the worse — to see the 

 worse and follow the better, to raise our 

 actions high over our idea, must ever be 

 reasonable and salutary ; for human ex- 

 perience renders it daily more clear that 

 the highest thought we can attain will long 

 be inferior still to the mysterious truth we 

 seek. Moreover, should nothing of what 

 goes before be true, a reason more simple 

 and more familiar would counsel him not 

 yet to abandon his human ideal. For the 

 more strength he accords to the laws which 

 would seem to set egoism, injustice, and 

 cruelty as examples for men to follow, the 

 more strength does he at the same time 

 confer on the others that ordain generosity, 

 justice, and pity ; and these last laws are 

 found to contain something as profoundly 

 natural as the first, the moment he begins 

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