1 68 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



idea of Nature reveals itself in one and the same phenomenon, 

 and at the very same time, as circumspect and shiftless, niggard 

 and prodigal, prudent and careless, fickle and stable, agitated 

 and immovable, one and innumerable, magnificent and squalid. 

 There lay open before her the immense and virgin fields of 

 simplicity ; she chose to people them with trivial errors, v^fith 

 petty contradictory laws that stray through existence like a 

 flock of blind sheep. It is true that our eye, before which 

 these things happen, can only reflect a reality proportionate 

 to our needs and our stature ; nor have we any warrant for 

 believing that Nature ever loses sight of her wandering results 

 and causes. 



In any event she will rarely permit them to stray too far, 

 or approach illogical or dangerous regions. She disposes of 

 two forces that can never err ; and when the phenomenon 

 shall have trespassed beyond certain limits, she will beckon 

 to life or to death — which arrives, re-establishes order, and 

 unconcernedly marks out the path afresh. 



88 



She eludes us on every side ; she repudiates most of our 

 rules, and breaks our standards to pieces. On our right she 

 sinks far beneath the level of our thoughts, on our left she 

 towers mountain-high above them. She appears to be con- 

 stantly blundering, no less in the world of her first experiments 

 than in that of her last, of man. There she invests with her 

 sanction the instincts of the obscure mass, the unconscious 

 injustice of the multitude, the defeat of intelligence and virtue, 

 the uninspired morality which urges on the great wave of 



