1 78 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



this truth, and to preserve in our soul the ardour we need 

 for its search, it behoves us to deem it great. And if we 

 should find one day that we have been on a wrong road, 

 that this aim is incoherent and petty, we shall have dis- 

 covered its pettiness by means of the very zeal its presumed 

 grandeur had created within us ; and this pettiness once 

 established, it will teach us what we have to do. In the 

 meanwhile it cannot be unwise to devote to its search the 

 most strenuous, daring efforts of our heart and our reason. 

 And should the last word of all this be wretched, it will 

 be no little achievement to have laid bare the inanity and 

 the pettiness of the aim of Nature. 



93 

 " There is no truth for us yet," a great physiologist of 

 our day remarked to me once, as I walked with him in the 

 country ; " there is no truth yet, but there are everywhere 

 three very good semblances of truth. Each man makes his 

 own choice, or rather, perhaps, has it thrust upon him ; and 

 this choice, whether it be thrust upon him, or whether, as 

 is often the case, he have made it without due reflection, 

 this choice, to which he clings, will determine the form and 

 the conduct of all that enters within him. The friend 

 whom we meet, the woman who approaches and smiles, the 

 love that unlocks our heart, the death or sorrow that seals 

 it, the September sky above us, this superb and delightful 

 garden, wherein we see, as in Corneille's ' Psyche,' bowers 

 of greenery resting on gilded statues, and the flocks grazing 

 yonder, with their shepherd asleep, and the last houses of the 



