152 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



8i 



Have we the right to conclude, from the dangers of 

 parthenogenesis, that nature is not always able to proportion 

 the means to the end ; and that what she intends to preserve 

 is preserved at times by means of precautions she has to 

 contrive against her own precautions, and often through 

 foreign circumstances she has not herself foreseen ? But is 

 thei-e anything she does foresee, anything she does intend 

 to preserve ? Nature, some may say, is a word wherewith 

 we clothe the unknowable ; and few things authorise our 

 crediting it with intelligence, or with aim. That is true. 

 We touch here the hermetically sealed vases that furnish 

 our conception of the universe. Reluctant over and over 

 again to label these with the inscription " Unknown," that 

 disheartens us and compels us to silence, we engrave upon 

 them, in the degree of their size and grandeur, the words 

 " Nature, life, death, infinite, selection, spirit of the race," 

 and many others, even as those who went before us affixed 

 the words " God, Providence, destiny, reward," &c. Let it 

 be so, if one will, and no more. But, though the contents 

 of the vases remain obscure, there is gain at least in the 

 fact that the inscriptions to-day convey less menace to us, 

 that we are able therefore to approach them and touch 

 them, and lay our ears close to them and listen, with whole- 

 some curiosity. 



But whatever the name we attach to these vases, it is 

 certain that one of them, at least, and the greatest — that 

 which bears on its flank the name "Nature" — encloses a 



