Page:The life of the bee (IA cu31924101469827).pdf/104

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.

"All must agree," remarks Buffon, who has a somewhat amusing prejudice against the bee,—"all must agree that 92