36 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



customs and laws, their political and economical organisation, 

 their virtues, and even their cruelties ? Nor is this god, 

 though it be perhaps the only one to which man has as 

 yet never offered serious worship, by any means the least 

 reasonable or the least legitimate that we can conceive. The 

 god of the bees is the future. When we, in our study of 

 human history, endeavour to gauge the moral force or great- 

 ness of a people or race, we have one standard of measure- 

 ment only — the dignity and permanence of their ideal, and 

 the abnegation wherewith they pursue it. Have we often 

 encountered an ideal more conformable to the desires of the 

 universe, more widely manifest, more disinterested and sub- 

 lime ; have we often discovered an abnegation more complete 

 and heroic ? 



19 



Strange little republic, that, for all its logic and gravity, 

 its matured conviction and prudence, still falls victim to so 

 vast and precarious a dream ! Who shall tell us, oh little 

 people that are so profoundly in earnest, that have fed on 

 the warmth and the light and on nature's purest, the soul 

 of the flowers — wherein matter for once seems to smile and 

 put forth its most wistful effort towards beauty and happiness 

 — who shall tell us what problems you have resolved, but 

 we not yet ; what certitudes you have acquired, that we 

 still have to conquer .? And if you have truly resolved these 

 problems, acquired these certitudes, by the aid of some bUnd 

 and primitive impulse and not through the intellect, then 

 to what enigma, more insoluble still, are you not urging us 



