bees build cells in which the eggs laid by the queen may come to
maturity, and, as a general rule, make just as many chambers as the
queen lays eggs; they make these, moreover, in the same order as that
in which the queen lays her eggs, namely, first for the working-bees,
then for the drones, and lastly for the queens. In the polity of the
bees, the working and the sexual capacities, which were once united,
are now personified in three distinct kinds of individual, and these
combine with an inner, unconscious, spiritual union, so as to form a
single body politic, as the organs of a living body combine to form
the body itself.

In this chapter, therefore, we have arrived at the following
conclusions:-

Instinct is not the result of conscious deliberation; {132} it is not
a consequence of bodily organisation; it is not a mere result of a
mechanism which lies in the organisation of the brain; it is not the
operation of dead mechanism, glued on, as it were, to the soul, and
foreign to its inmost essence; but it is the spontaneous action of
the individual, springing from his most essential nature and
character. The purpose to which any particular kind of instinctive
action is subservient is not the purpose of a soul standing outside
the individual and near akin to Providence--a purpose once for all
thought out, and now become a matter of necessity to the individual,
so that he can act in no other way, though it is engrafted into his
nature from without, and not natural to it. The purpose of the
instinct is in each individual case thought out and willed
unconsciously by the individual, and afterwards the choice of means
adapted to each particular case is arrived at unconsciously. A
knowledge of the purpose is often absolutely unattainable {133} by