170 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



include, in the great scheme he is endeavouring to grasp, 

 and declines to regard as sufficiently lofty to be definitive, 

 any truth that is not at least as lofty as the truth he himself 

 desires. Nothing shifts its place in his life save only to rise 

 with him ; and he knows he is rising when he finds himself 

 drawing near to his ancient image of good. But all things 

 transform themselves more freely in his thoughts ; and, in 

 his passionate contemplation, he may with impunity probe 

 so far as to value the most cruel, most immoral contradictions 

 of life as highly as its virtues ; for he has the presentiment 

 that valley after valley will lead him to the table-land of 

 his dreams. Nor will this love, this contemplation, hinder 

 him, while seeking conviction, from directing his conduct 

 by the most humanly beautiful truth, and clinging to the 

 one that provisionally seems to be highest, even though his 

 researches lead him to the very reverse of what he loves. 

 All that may add to beneficent virtue enters his heart at 

 once ; all that would tend to lessen it remaining there in 

 suspense, like insoluble salts that change not till the hour 

 for decisive experiment. He may accept an inferior truth, 

 but before he will act in accordance therewith he v^ill wait, 

 if need be for centuries, until he perceive the connection 

 this truth must possess with truths so infinite as to include 

 and surpass all others. 



In a word, he divides the moral from the intellectual 

 order, admitting in the former that only which is greater 

 and more beautiful than was there before. And blameworthy 

 as it may be to separate the two orders in cases, only too 

 frequent in life, where we suffer our conduct to be inferior 

 to our thoughts, where, seeing the good, we follow the 



