to lose the chance of deep admiration; which of all things in the
world is the most helpful to us.

[29]

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, have no idea of the kind; that their
care for the future, love of the race, and many other feelings we
choose to ascribe to them, are truly no more than forms assumed by
the necessities of life, the fear of suffering or death, and the
attraction of pleasure. Let it be so; look on it all as a figure of
speech; it is a matter to which I attach no importance. The one
thing certain here, as it is the one thing certain in all other
cases, is that, under special circumstances, the bees will treat
their queen in a special manner. The rest is all mystery, around
which we only can weave more or less ingenious and pleasant
conjecture. And yet, were we speaking of man in the manner wherein
it were wise perhaps to speak of the bee, is there very much more we
could say? He too yields only to necessity, the attraction of
pleasure, and the fear of suffering; and what we call our intellect
has the same 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