42^ THE PHILOSOPHY 



ment, and build habitations fuited to their mutual comfort 

 and prefervation ? No. If not allowed to efcape from their 

 prefent lituation, they would fuffocate each other •, and, if 

 any of thern were permitted to get out of their prifon, inflead 

 of returning, like the bees, they would avoid it with as much 

 horror as a perfon who had made his efcape from the Black 

 Hole of Calcutta. No declamatory reafoning, however fpe- 

 cious, will ever change the nature of truth. Without fome 

 portion of intellect, or what is fynonimous, of mental powers, 

 how fliould the different kinds of bees in the fame hive be 

 induced to perform fo many different operations ? While 

 fome are bufily employed at home in the conftrudlion of 

 cells, others are equally induftrious in the fields collecting 

 materials for carrying on the work. They are no fooner 

 relieved from their load by their companions and fellow-la- 

 bourers in the hive, than they again repair to the fields, 

 and, v/ith perfevering indufi:ry, fly from flower to flower 

 till they have amafled another load of materials, which they 

 immediately tranfport to the hive. In this laborious ofiice 

 they perfift for many hours every day when the weather 

 permits. Will any man pretend to afTert, that thefe, and 

 many fimilar operations performed by bees, are the refults of 

 mechanical impulfes* ? Are bees, when colleifting honey, 

 and the farina of flowers, at great difi:ances from the hive, 

 compelled by the mechanical preflure of multitudes, to af- 

 fume a certain arrangement, and all of them to aft in the 

 fame manner ? Can any animal be pofi^efled of more liber- 

 ty, or be more free from mechanical reftraint than a bee while 

 roaming at large in the fields ? Befides, what fliould force a 

 bee, while wallowing in luxury, to return fo repeatedly to 

 the hive with no other view than to feed its companions, or 

 to furnifli them with materials for their work ? Here every 

 idea of mechanical impulfe is utterly excluded. That bees, 



* For feveral curious operations of bees, which ic will be difficult to recon- 

 cile with any principles of naechanifm, the reader may confult page 336, &c. 



