The Foundation of the City 
said, “‘you fill a dish with peas or any other 
cylindrical bean, pour as much water into it 
as the space between the beans will allow, 
close it carefully and then boil the water, 
you will find that all these cylinders have 
become six-sided columns. And the reason 
is evident, being indeed purely mechanical : 
each of the cylindrical beans tends, as it 
swells, to occupy the utmost possible space 
within a given space; wherefore it follows 
that the reciprocal compression compels 
them all to become hexagonal. Similarly 
each bee seeks to occupy the utmost possible 
space within a given space, with the neces- 
sary result that, its body being cylindrical, 
the cells become hexagonal for the same 
reason as before, viz., the working of recip- 
rocal obstacles.” 
60 
These reciprocal obstacles, it would seem, 
are capable of marvellous achievement; on 
the same principle, doubtless, that the vices 
of man produce a general virtue, whereby 
the human race, hateful often in its in- 
dividuals, ceases to be so in the mass. We 
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