The Life of the Bee 
are idle, and we who are putting them to 
you mere childish dreamers, hedged round 
with error and doubt? And indeed, had suc- 
cessive evolutions installed you all-powerful 
and supremely happy, had you gained the 
last heights whence at length you ruled 
over nature’s laws—nay, were you immor- 
tal goddesses—we still should be asking 
what your desires might be, your ideas of 
progress; wondering where you imagined 
that at last you would rest, and declare 
your wishes fulfilled. We are so made 
that nothing contents us; that we can 
regard no single thing as having its aim 
self-contained, as simply existing, with no 
thought beyond existence. Has there been, 
to this day, one god out of all the multitude 
man has conceived, from the vulgarest to 
the most thoughtful, of whom it has not 
been required that he shall be active and 
stirring, that he shall create countless beings 
and things, and have myriad aims outside 
himself? And will the time ever come 
when we shall be resigned for a few hours 
tranquilly to represent in this world an 
interesting form of material activity; and 
58 
