1 84 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



that it overcomes. Besides, a mere trifle that we may discover 

 to-morrowr may render these poisons innocuous. These men 

 have thoughts and feelings that those of whom La Bruyere 

 speaks had not." " I prefer the simple naked animal to the 

 odious half-animal," I murmured. "You are thinking of 

 the first semblance now," he replied, " the semblance dear to the 

 poet, that we saw before ; let us not confuse it with the one we 

 are now considering. These thoughts and feelings are petty, 

 if you will, and vile ; but what is petty and vile is still better 

 than that which is not at all. Of these thoughts and feelings 

 they avail themselves only to hurt each other, and to persist 

 in their present mediocrity ; but thus does it often happen in 

 Nature. The gifts she accords are employed for evil at first, 

 for the rendering worse what she had apparently sought to 

 improve ; but from this evil a certain good will always result at 

 the end. Besides, I am by no means anxious to prove that there 

 has been progress, which may be a very small thing or a very 

 great thing, according to the place whence we regard it. It is 

 a vast achievement, the surest ideal perhaps, to render the con- 

 dition of men a little less servile, a little less painful ; but let 

 the mind detach itself for an instant from material results, and 

 the difference between the man who marches in the van of prog- 

 ress and the other who is blindly dragged at its tail ceases to be 

 very considerable. Among these young rustics, whose mind is 

 haunted only by formless ideas, there are many who have in 

 themselves the possibility of attaining, in a short space of time, 

 the degree of consciousness that we both enjoy. One often 

 is struck by the narrowness of the dividing-line between 

 what we regard as the unconsciousness of these people and 

 the consciousness that to us is the highest of all. 



