The Life of the Bee 
pleasure and the fear of suffering ; and what 
we call our intellect has the same origin and 
mission as what in animals we choose to 
term instinct. We do certain things, whose 
results we conceive to be known to us; 
other things happen, and we flatter ourselves 
that we are better equipped than animals 
can be to divine their causes; but, apart 
from the fact that this supposition rests 
on no very solid foundation, events of this 
nature are rare; and infinitesimal, compared 
with the vast mass of others that elude com- 
prehension; and all, the pettiest and the 
most sublime, the best known and the most 
inexplicable, the nearest and the most dis- 
tant, come to pass in a night so profound 
that our blindness may well be almost as 
great as that we suppose in the bee. 
30 
‘All must agree,” remarks Buffon, who 
has a somewhat amusing prejudice against 
the bee; ‘“‘all must agree that these flies, 
individually considered, possess far less 
genius than the dog, the monkey, or the 
7 
