The Life of the Bee 
forms temporary associations (the Pan- 
urgi, the Dasypode, the Hiacliti, etc.) 
and at last we arrive, through successive 
stages, at the almost perfect but pitiless 
society of our hives, where the individual 
is entirely merged in the republic, and 
the republic in its turn invariably sacri- 
ficed to the abstract and immortal city of 
the future. 
[8] 
Let us not too hastily deduce from 
these facts conclusions that apply to man. 
He possesses the power of withstanding 
certain of nature’s laws; and to know 
whether such resistance be right or wrong 
is the gravest and obscurest point in his 
morality. But it is deeply interesting 
to discover what the will of nature may 
be in a different world; and this will 
is revealed with extraordinary clearness in 
the evolution of the hymenoptera, which, 
32 
