1901 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



203 



the bee-keeper, Maeterlinck's peculiar 

 and exceedingly broad treatment of his 

 subject appeals forcibly to every student 

 of nature. 



Hardly less interesting than the book 

 itself, which is published by Dodd, Mead 

 &Co., N. Y., is the Philadelphia North 

 American's review of the work, which 

 we give in part, as follows, and to whom 

 we are indebted for the accompanying 

 picture of the author : 



"Maurice Maeterlinck takes as to the 

 school of the bees and shows us how to 

 obtain there deep draughts of the honey 

 of a wholesome philosphy, which, after 



MAUKICE MAETERLINCK. 



all, is a liberal recognition of our own 

 ignorance. He makes upon ' The Life 

 of the Bee' a candid disquisition, bring- 

 ing into relation with his subject the 

 profoundest problems of nature and the 

 gravest postulates of metaphyics. 



'•Before civilization was it is probable 

 that the industry and systematic habits 

 of the bee impressed their lesson upon the 

 minds of men. Since poets earliest sang 

 of the sweets of Mount Hybla, the bee 

 has been the familiarly cited example of 

 the orderly virtues and of wise humility, 

 coupled with great worth. Just why the 

 reporter of ancient proverbs did not 



write ' Go to the bee, thou sluggard," is 

 not obvious. The glory that has descend- 

 ed upon the ant is far less deserved. The 

 bee in this climate, it is true, passes the 

 winter in a semi-torpid state, but that is 

 not her fault; it is the fault of both 

 nature and man — nature in making such 

 a climate and man in insisting upon her 

 being an exile from the flowery vales of 

 Sicily and the sunny plains of Southern 

 Asia, where her earliest ancestors were 

 first known to exist. The bee remains 

 the most respected of the insect king- 

 dom, and notwithstanding that a vast 

 deal of fable and of misinformation re- 

 lating to her has been swept away by 

 the active scientific conscience of mod- 

 ern investigators, she still affords the 

 inspiration of much pleasing sentiment 

 and genuine food for the taste for the 

 marvelous that is existent in every 

 human being. Putting aside forever the 

 needless untruths in regard to the bee 

 which old writers invented or fancied 

 that they discerned, to account for some 

 things in her economy or her polity or 

 her emotional impulses, that seemed, 

 and still seem, most mysterious, the 

 truths that may be told of her are yet a 

 perpetual fountain of wonder, as well 

 those whicli explain observed phenomena 

 as others that simply state effects and 

 our ignorance of causes. 



" Maeterlinck takes at once absolute 

 hold upon the reader's confidence by the 

 austere directness of his search for 

 truth, the disdain with which he leaves 

 in the background as childish many old 

 myths about the bee ; the zeal and the 

 zest with which he explores the verified 

 data of apiculture for a clue to a suffer- 

 ing definition of the 'spirit" that governs 

 the hive; for a compensating principle 

 to offset that seeming waste and cruelty 

 of a portion of the communal polity 

 which contrasts so strongly with its gen- 

 eral reasonableness. The problem of 

 bee life incites to far excursions into 

 the abstract; to contemplation of both 

 material and spiritual nature, though 

 mostly confined to the former. He 

 seem' at times to fancy that the bee may 

 sooner or later furnish to man the key- 

 word to the enigma of the universe; at 

 others to accept the incapacity of the 

 finite to grasp the infinite as a condition 

 hopelessly unchangeable ; and with an 

 intellectual stoicism peculiarly Germanic 

 he submits himself to the most material- 

 istic limitations of spiritual aspiration, 

 looking for comfort only in the deeper 

 understanding of that which does not 

 challenge a solution of the ultimate 



