HUMAN LIFE 



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 of the gods of Nature. How they must 



envy if they can envy that fortunate 

 big brother man who can make his future 

 life what he will, who is his own chief 

 factor in his own evolution. Some com- 

 munism-mad men sometimes hold up 

 before us the perfect, machine-turned, 

 communal life of ants and bees as a model 

 for humankind to copy. Do they realize 

 what an ant or a bee is born to? An 

 individual life entirely scheduled; a per- 

 sonal knowledge as large at birth as it 

 ever will be; a personal fate that can all 

 be told by the first seeress applied to, and 

 a species fate all in the hands of a coldly 

 impersonal and pitiless Nature. I some- 

 times feel sorry for the bees. If they 

 have sunshine and flowers they have also 

 the dark and crowded hive. And within 

 and without, their every hour is sched- 

 uled, their every activity predetermined. 

 I have even felt so exercised about the 

 bees that I have written a little book 

 about them in which I have imagined a 

 bee heroine called Nuova who is a new 

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