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 from matter, it is still quite material.  It is cold, hunger, fear, transformed into something that as yet has no shape.  It crawls vaguely around great dangers, around the long nights, the approach of winter, of an equivocal sleep which almost is death. . . .

[106]

The Xylocopae are powerful bees which worm their nest in dry wood.  Their life is solitary always.  Towards the end of summer, however, some individuals of a particular species, the Xylocopa Cyanescens, may be found huddled together in a shivering group, on a stalk of asphodel, to spend the winter in common.  Among the Xylocopae this tardy fraternity is exceptional, but among the Ceratinae, which are of their nearest kindred, it has become a constant habit.  The idea is germinating.  It halts immediately; and hitherto has not succeeded, among the Xylocopae, in passing beyond this first obscure line of love.

Among other Apiens, this groping idea assumes other forms.  The Chalicodomae of the out-houses, which are building-bees, the Dasypodae and Halicti, which dig holes in the earth, unite in large colonies to construct their nests.  But it is an illusory crowd composed of solitary units, that possess no mutual understanding, and do not act in common.  Each one is profoundly isolated in the midst of the multitude, and builds a dwelling for itself alone, heedless of its neighbour.  “They are,” M. Perez remarks, “a mere congregation of individuals, brought together by similar tastes and habits, but observing scrupulously the maxim of each one for itself; in fact, a mere mob of workers, resembling the swarrn of a hive only as regards their number and zeal.  Such assemblies merely result from a great number of individuals inhabiting the same locality.”

But when we come to the Panurgi, which are cousins of the Dasypodae, a little ray of light suddenly reveals the birth of a new sentiment in this fortuitous crowd.  They collect in the same way as the others, and each one digs its own subterranean chambers; but the entrance is common to all, as also the gallery which leads from the surface of the ground to the different cells.  “And thus,” M. Perez adds, “as far