The Life of the Bee 



by whose side he seats himself, he who 

 has guarded the hearth, be blind or very 

 old. So long as the fire still burn that he 

 has been watching, he has done as much 

 as the best could have done. Well for 

 us if we can transmit this ardour, not as 

 we received it, but added to by ourselves ; 

 and nothing will add to it more than this 

 hypothesis of evolution, which goads us to 

 question with an ever severer method and 

 ever increasing zeal all that exists on the 

 earth's surface and in its entrails, in the 

 depths of the sea and expanse of the sky. 

 Reject it, and what can we set up against it, 

 what can we put in its place ? There is 

 but the grand confession of scientific igno- 

 rance, aware of its knowing nothing — but 

 this is habitually sluggish, and calculated 

 to discourage the curiosity more needful 

 to man than wisdom — or the hypothesis 

 of the fixity of the species and of divine 

 creation, which is less demonstrable than 

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