THE YOUNG QUEENS 151 



to us, but necessarily wise, seeing that the life she organises and 

 maintains is forever proving her to be right ? Can feebleness 

 at times overcome that supreme reason w^hich w^e are apt to 

 invoke when we have attained the limits of our own ? And 

 if that be so, by whom shall this feebleness be set right ? 



But let us return to the special form of her resistless 

 intervention that we find in parthenogenesis. And we shall 

 do well to remember that, remote as the world may seem 

 in which these problems confront us, they do indeed yet 

 concern ourselves very nearly. Who would dare to affirm 

 that no interventions take place in the sphere of man — inter- 

 ventions that may be more hidden, but are not the less 

 fraught with danger ? And in the case before us, which is 

 right in the end : the insect, or nature ? What would 

 happen if the bees, more docile, perhaps, or endowed with 

 a higher intelligence, were too clearly to understand the 

 desires of nature, and to follow them to the extreme : to 

 multiply males to infinity, seeing that nature is imperiously 

 calling for males ? Would they not risk the destruction 

 of their species ? Are we to believe that there are intentions 

 in nature that it is dangerous to understand too clearly, fatal 

 to follow with too much ardour ; and that it is one of her 

 desires that we should not divine, and follow, all her desires ? 

 Is it not possible that herein may lie one of the perils of 

 the human race ? We too are aware of unconscious forces 

 within us, that would appear to demand the reverse of 

 what our intellect urges. And this intellect of ours, that, 

 as a rule, its own boundary reached, knows not whither to 



go can it be well that it should join itself to these forces, 



and add to them its unexpected weight ? 



