The Life of the Bee 



left to ourselves, to our own resources. 

 It is to our humblest efforts that every 

 useful, enduring achievement of this earth 

 is due. It is open to us, if we choose, to 

 await the better or worse that may follow 

 some alien accident, but on condition that 

 such expectation shall not hinder our 

 human task. Here again do the bees, 

 as Nature always, provide a most excel- 

 lent lesson. In the hive there has truly 

 been prodigious intervention. The bees 

 are in the hands of a power capable of 

 annihilating or modifying their race, of 

 transforming their destinies ; the bees' 

 thraldom is far' more definite than our 

 own. Therefore none the less do they 

 perform their profound and primitive 

 duty. And, among them, it is precisely 

 those whose obedience to duty is most 

 complete who are able most fully to 

 profit by the supernatural intervention 

 that to-day has raised the destiny of their 

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