The Swarm 
parish of ours, such infallible judges of 
matters that pertain to the spirit? Can we 
so readily divine the thoughts that may 
govern the two or three people whom we 
may chance to see moving and talking 
behind a closed window when their words 
do not reach us? Or let us suppose that 
an inhabitant of Venus or Mars were to 
contemplate us from the height of a moun- 
tain, and watch the little black specks that 
we form in space as we come and go in the 
streets and squares of our towns. Would 
the mere sight of our movements, our 
buildings, machines, and canals, convey to 
him any precise idea of our morality, intel- 
lect, our manner of thinking and loving 
and hoping—in a word, of our real and 
intimate self? All he could do, like our- 
selves as we gaze at the hive, would be to 
take note of some facts that seem very 
surprising ; and from these facts to deduce 
conclusions probably no less erroneous, no 
less uncertain, than those that we choose to 
form concerning the bee. 
This much at least is certain; our “ little 
black specks’? would not offer the vast 
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