The Life of the Bee 
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 cause; 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 comprehension ; 
and all, the pettiest and the most sublime, 
the best known and the most inexplicable, 
the nearest and the most distant, 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 
g2 
