flight, scare away vagabonds, marauders and loiterers, expel all
intruders, attack redoubtable foes in a body, and, if need be,
barricade the entrance.

Finally, it is the spirit of the hive that fixes the hour of the
great annual sacrifice to the genius of the race: the hour, that is,
of the swarm; when we find a whole people, who have attained the
topmost pinnacle of prosperity and power, suddenly abandoning to the
generation to come their wealth and their palaces, their homes and
the fruits of their labour; themselves content to encounter the
hardships and perils of a new and distant country. This act, be it
conscious or not, undoubtedly passes the limits of human morality.
Its result will sometimes be ruin, but poverty always; and the
thrice-happy city is scattered abroad in obedience to a law superior
to its own happiness. Where has this law been decreed, which, as we
soon shall find, is by no means as blind and inevitable as one might
believe? Where, in what assembly, what council, what intellectual
and moral sphere, does this spirit reside to whom all must submit,
itself being vassal to an heroic duty, to an intelligence whose eyes
are persistently fixed on the future?

It comes to pass with the bees as with most of the things in this
world; we remark some few of their habits; we say they do this, they
work in such and such fashion, their queens are born thus, their
workers are virgin, they swarm at a certain time. And then we
imagine we know them, and ask nothing more. We watch them hasten
from flower to flower, we see the constant agitation within the
hive; their life seems very simple to us, and bounded, like every
life, by the instinctive cares of reproduction and nourishment. But
let the eye draw near, and endeavour to see; and at once the least