INTRODUCTION xvii 



honey-bee or perish ? We have still probably a 

 few thousand years wherein to think it out, and 

 prepare for it ; but unless the world comes to an 

 end, or human increasing-and-multiplying comes 

 to an end, one earth will eventually become too 

 small to hold us. With this thought in mind, a 

 study of the honey-bee and the arrangements of 

 hive-life, takes on a new interest. Supposing that 

 the political economy of a beehive may be taken 

 as a foreshadowing of the ultimate human state, 

 there is no denying that we get a glimpse into an 

 eminently disquieting state of things, at least from 

 the masculine point of view. We see matriarchy 

 triumphant ; the females holding supreme control 

 in the State, and not only initiating all rules of 

 public conduct, but designing and carrying through 

 all public works. The male is reduced to the one 

 indispensable office of sex, and even a single 

 exercise of this is vouchsafed only to a few in a 

 thousand. But to create the large and permanent 

 army of workers necessary in a State such as this, 

 and to recruit it wholly from the females, it became 

 necessary to revise all rules of life from their 

 very foundation. There must have been a great 

 renunciation among the bees, male and female 

 alike, when the resolve was made to leave the 

 whole duty of procreation of their kind to one 

 b 



