If I May | Page 2

all right.
I made the discovery that we were all right by studying the life of the
bee. All that I knew about bees until yesterday was derived from that
great naturalist, Dr. Isaac Watts. In common with every one who has
been a child I knew that the insect in question improved each shining
hour by something honey something something every something flower.
I had also heard that bees could not sting you if you held your breath, a
precaution which would make conversation by the herbaceous border
an affair altogether too spasmodic; and, finally, that in any case the
same bee could only sting you once--though, apparently, there was no
similar provision of Nature's that the same person could not be stung
twice.
Well, that was all that I knew about bees until yesterday. I used to see
them about the place from time to time, busy enough, no douht, but
really no busier than I was; and as they were not much interested in me
they had no reason to complain that I was not much interested in them.
But since yesterday, when I read a book which dealt fully, not only
with the public life of the bee, but with the most intimate details of its
private life, I have looked at them with a new interest and a new
sympathy. For there is no animal which does not get more out of life
than the pitiable insect which Dr. Watts holds up as an example to us.
Hitherto, it may be, you have thought of the bee as an admirable and
industrious insect, member of a model community which worked day
and night to but one end--the well-being of the coming race. You knew
perhaps that it fertilized the flowers, but you also knew that the bee
didn't know; you were aware that, it any bee deliberately went about
trying to improve your delphiniums instead of gathering honey for the
State, it would be turned down promptly by the other workers. For
nothing is done in the hive without this one utilitarian purpose. Even
the drones take their place in the scheme of things; a minor place in the
stud; and when the next generation is assured, and the drones cease to
be useful and can now only revert to the ornamental, they are ruthlessly

cast out.
It comes, then, to this. The bee devotes its whole life to preparing for
the next generation. But what is the next generation going to do? It is
going to spend its whole life preparing for the third generation... and so
on for ever.
An admirable community, the moralists tell us. Poor moralists! To miss
so much of the joy of life; to deny oneself the pleasure (to mention only
one among many) of reclining lazily on one's back in a snap-dragon,
watching the little white clouds sail past upon a sea of blue; to miss
these things for no other reason than that the next generation may also
have an opportunity of missing them--is that admirable? What do the
bees think that they are doing? If they live a life of toil and
self-sacrifice merely in order that the next generation may live a life of
equal toil and self-sacrifice, what has been gained? Ask the next bee
you meet what it thinks it is doing in this world, and the only answer it
can give you is, "Keeping up the supply of bees." Is that an admirable
answer? How much more admirable if it could reply that it was
eschewing all pleasure and living the life of a galley-slave in order that
the next generation might have leisure to paint the poppy a more
glorious scarlet. But no. The next generation is going at it just as hard
for the same unproductive end; it has no wish to leave anything behind
it--a new colour, a new scent, a new idea. It has one object only in this
world--more bees. Could any scheme of life be more sterile?
Having come to this conclusion about the bee, I took fresh courage. I
saw at once that it was the artist in Man which made him less
contemptible than the Bee. That god-like person the grower of wheat
assumed his proper level. Bread may be necessary to existence, but
what is the use of existence if you are merely going to employ it in
making bread? True, the farmer makes bread, not only for himself, but
for the miner; and the miner produces coal--not only for himself, but
for the farmer; and the farmer also Produces bread for the maker of
boots, who Produces boots, not only for himself, but for the farmer and
the miner. But you are still getting ting no further. It is the Life of the