Page:The life of the bee (IA cu31924101469827).pdf/102

The Life of the Bee other than their fixed idea. Why inquire as to whether this idea be conscious or not? Such speculation can have value only if our anxiety be to determine whether we should more rightly admire the bees that have the idea, or nature that has planted it in them. Wherever it lodge, in the vast unknowable body or in the tiny ones that we see, it merits our deepest attention; nor may it be out of place here to observe that it is the habit we have of subordinating our wonder to accidents of origin or place, that so often causes us to lose the chance of deep admiration; which of all things in the world is the most helpful to us.

These conjectures may perhaps be regarded as exceedingly venturesome, and possibly also as unduly human. It may be urged that the bees, in all probability, 90