38 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



aim is clear to us, clearer than our own ; you desire to live, 

 as long as the world itself, in those that come after you ; 

 but what can the aim be of this great aim ; what the 

 mission of this existence eternally renewed ? 



And yet may it not be that these questions are idle, 

 and we who are putting them to you mere childish dreamers, 

 hedged round with error and doubt ? And indeed, had suc- 

 cessive evolutions installed you all-powerful and supremely 

 happy, had you gained the last heights whence at length 

 you ruled over nature's laws — nay, were you immortal god- 

 desses — we still should be asking what your desires might 

 be, your ideas of progress ; wondering where you imagined 

 that at last you would rest, and declare your wishes fulfilled. 

 We are so made that nothing contents us ; that we can 

 regard no single thing as having its aim self-contained, as 

 simply existing, with no thought beyond existence. Has 

 there been, to this day, one god out of all the multitude 

 man has conceived, from the vulgarest to the most thought- 

 ful, of whom it has not been required that he shall be 

 active and stirring, that he shall create countless beings and 

 things, and have myriad aims outside himself? And will 

 the time ever come when we shall be resigned for a few 

 hours tranquilly to represent in this world an interesting 

 form of material activity ; and then, our few hours over, 

 to assume, without surprise and without regret, that other 

 form which is the unconscious, the unknown, the slumber- 

 ing, and the eternal ? 



