96 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



with such infinite care, a minute fragment of almost in- 

 visible matter, as though it were a fluid whereon depended 

 the destiny of man ? I hold, and exaggerate nothing, that 

 our interest herein is of the most considerable. The discovery 

 of a sign of true intellect outside ourselves procures us some- 

 thing of the emotion Robinson Crusoe felt when he saw 

 the imprint of a human foot on the sandy beach of his 

 island. We seem less solitary than we had believed. And 

 indeed, in our endeavour to understand the intellect of the 

 bees, we are studying in them that which is most precious 

 in our own substance : an atom of the extraordinary matter 

 which possesses, wherever it attach itself, the magnificent 

 power of transfiguring blind necessity, of organising, embel- 

 lishing, and multiplying life ; and, most striking of all, of 

 holding in suspense the obstinate force of death and the 

 mighty, irresponsible wave that wraps almost all that exists 

 in an eternal unconsciousness. 



Were we sole possessors of the particle of matter that, 

 when maintained in a special condition of flower or incan- 

 descence, we term the intellect, we should be to some extent 

 entitled to look on ourselves as privileged beings, and to 

 imagine that in us nature achieved some kind of aim ; but 

 here we discover, in the hymenoptera, an entire category of 

 beings in whom a more or less identical aim is achieved. 

 And this fact, though it decide nothing perhaps, still holds 

 an honourable place in the mass of tiny facts that help to 

 throw Hght on our position in this world. It affords even, 

 if considered from a certain point of view, a fresh proof of 

 the most enigmatic part of our being ; for the superpositions 

 of destmies that we find in the hive are surveyed by us from 



