The Life of the Bee
be constantly blundering, no less in the world of her first experiments than in that of her last, of man. There she invests with her sanction the instincts of the obscure mass, the unconscious injustice of the multitude, the defeat of intelligence and virtue, the uninspired morality which urges on the great wave of the race, though manifestly inferior to the morality that could be conceived or desired by the minds composing the small and the clearer wave that ascends the other. And yet, can such a mind be wrong if it ask itself whether the whole truth—moral truths, therefore, as well as non-moral—had not better be sought in this chaos than in itself, where these truths would seem comparatively clear and precise?
The man who feels thus will never attempt to deny the reason or virtue of his ideal, hallowed by so many heroes and sages; but there are times when he
310
