230 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



117 



But such speculations may well be avoided. Let not the 

 possibility of general annihilation blur our perception of the 

 task before us ; above all, let us not count on the miraculous aid 

 of chance. Hitherto, the promises of our imagination notw^ith- 

 standing, we have always been left to ourselves, to our own 

 resources. It is to our humblest efforts that every useful, 

 enduring achievement of this earth is due. It is open to us, if 

 we choose, to await the better or worse that may follow some 

 alien accident, but on condition that such expectation hinder 

 not our human task. Here again do the bees, as Nature always, 

 provide a most excellent lesson. In the hive there has truly 

 been prodigious intervention. The bees are in the hands of a 

 power capable of annihilating or modifying their race, of trans- 

 forming their destinies ; the bees' thraldom is far more definite 

 than our own. Therefore none the less do they perform their 

 profound and primitive duty. And, among them, it is precisely 

 those whose obedience to duty is most complete who are able to 

 profit most fully to-day by the supernatural intervention that 

 has raised the destiny of their species. And, indeed, to discover 

 the unconquerable duty of a being is less difficult than one 

 imagines. It is ever to be read in the distinguishing organs, 

 whereto the others are all subordinate. And just as it is written 

 in the tongue, the stomach and mouth of the bee that it must 

 make honey, so is it written in our eyes, our ears, our nerves, 

 our marrow, in every lobe of our head, in the whole nervous 

 system of our body, that we have been created in order to trans- 

 form all that we absorb of the things of earth into a particular 



