The Life of the Bee 
by whose side he seats himself, he who 
has guarded the hearth, be blind or very 
old. So long as the fire still burn that he 
has been watching, he has done as much 
as the best could have done. Well for 
us if we can transmit this ardour, not as 
we received it, but added to by ourselves ; 
and nothing will add to it more than this 
hypothesis of evolution, which goads us to 
question with an ever severer method and 
ever increasing zeal all that exists on the 
earth’s surface and in its entrails, in the 
depths of the sea and expanse of the sky. 
Reject it, and what can we set up against it, 
what can we put in its place? There is 
but the grand confession of scientific igno- 
rance, aware of its knowing nothing — but 
this is habitually sluggish, and calculated 
to discourage the curiosity more needful 
to man than wisdom — or the hypothesis 
of the fixity of the species and of divine 
creation, which is less demonstrable than 
386 
