THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 171 



worse ; to see the worse and follow the better, to raise our 



actions high over our idea, must ever be reasonable and 



salutary ; for human experience renders it daily more clear 



that the highest thought we can attain will long be inferior 



still to the mysterious truth we seek. Moreover, should 



nothing of what goes before be true, a reason more simple 



and more familiar would counsel him not yet to abandon his 



human ideal. For the more strength he accords to the 



laws which would seem to set egoism, injustice, and cruelty 



as examples for men to follow, the more strength does he 



at the same time confer on the others that ordain generosity, 



justice, and pity ; and these last laws are found to contain 



something as profoundly natural as the first the moment he 



begins to equalise, or allot more methodically, the share he 



attributes to the universe and to himself. 



89 



Let us return to the tragic nuptials of the queen. Here 

 it is evidently Nature's wish, in the interests of crossed 

 fertilisation, that the union of the drone and the queen-bee 

 should be possible only in the open sky. But her desires 

 blend network-fashion, and her most valued laws have to 

 pass through the meshes of other laws, which, in their turn, 

 the moment after, are compelled to pass through the first. 



In the sky she has planted so many dangers — cold 

 winds, storm-currents, birds, insects, drops of water, all of 

 which also obey invincible laws — that she must of necessity 

 arrange for this union to be as brief as possible. It is so, 

 thanks to the startlingly sudden death of the male. One 



