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The Life of the Bee

presses it, the pyre that some day shall feed its triumph.

If in this world all things be matter, this is surely its most immaterial movement. Transition is called for from a precarious, egotistic and incomplete life to a life that shall be fraternal, a little more certain, a little more happy. The spirit must ideally unite that which in the body is actually separate; the individual must sacrifice himself for the race, and substitute for visible things the things that cannot be seen. Need we wonder that the bees do not at the first glance realise what we have not yet disentangled, we who find ourselves at the privileged spot whence instinct radiates from all sides into our consciousness? And it is curious too, almost touching, to see how the new idea gropes its way, at first, in the darkness that enfolds all things that come to life on this earth. It emerges

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