The Life of the Bee 
with this truth, will appear as ancient as 
the philosophical writings of the eighteenth 
century seem to us now, full as they are of 
a too-perfect and non-existing man, or as so 
many works of the seventeenth century, 
whose value is lessened by their conception 
of a harsh and narrow god. 
Nevertheless, when it is impossible to 
know what the truth of a thing may be, it 
is well to accept the hypothesis that appeals 
the most urgently to the reason of men at 
the period when we happen to have come into 
the world. The chances are that it will be 
false; but so long as we believe it to be 
true it will serve a useful purpose by restor- 
ing our courage and stimulating research in 
a new direction. It might at the first glance 
seem wiser, perhaps, instead of advancing 
these ingenious suppositions, simply to say 
the profound truth, which is that we do not 
know. But this truth could be helpful only 
were it written that we never shall know. 
In the meanwhile it would induce a state of 
stagnation within us more pernicious than 
the most vexatious illusions. We are so 
constituted that nothing takes us further or 
314 
