luminous planet than ours, were to root up our nature, to suppress the laws, the passions, and radical truths of our being, our wisest plan still would be to devote the whole of to-day to the study of these passions, these laws, and these truths, which must blend and accord in our mind; and to remain faithful to the destiny imposed on us, which is to subdue, and to some extent raise within and around us the obscure forces of life.

None of these, perhaps, will survive the new revelation; but the soul of those who shall up to the end have fulfilled the mission that is pre-eminently the mission of man, must inevitably be in the front rank of all to welcome this revelation; and should they learn therefrom that indifference, or resignation to the unknown, is the veritable duty, they will be better equipped than the others for the comprehension of this final resignation and indifference, better able to turn these to account.

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But such speculations may well be avoided.  Let not the possibility of general annihilation blur our perception of the task before us; above all, let us not count on the miraculous aid of chance.  Hitherto, the promises of our imagination notwithstanding, we have always been left to ourselves, to our own resources.  It is to our humblest efforts that every useful, enduring achievement of this earth is due.  It is open to us, if we choose, to await the better or worse that may follow some alien accident, but on condition that such expectation shall not hinder our human task.  Here again do the bees, as Nature always, provide a most excellent lesson.  In the hive there has truly been prodigious intervention.  The bees are in the hands of a power capable of annihilating or modifying their race, of transforming their destinies; the bees’ thraldom is far more definite than our own.  Therefore none the less do they perform their profound and primitive duty.  And, among them, it is precisely those whose obedience to duty is most complete who are able most fully to profit by the supernatural intervention that to-day has raised the destiny of their species.  And indeed, to discover the unconquerable duty of a being is less difficult than one imagines.  It is ever to be read in the distinguishing organs, whereto the others are all subordinate.  And just as it is written in the tongue, the stomach, and mouth of the bee that it must make honey, so is it written in our eyes, our ears, our nerves, our marrow, in every lobe of our head, that we must make cerebral substance; nor is there need that we should divine the purpose this substance shall serve.  The bees know not whether they will eat the honey they harvest, as we know not who it is shall reap the profit of the cerebral substance we shall have formed, or of the intelligent fluid that issues therefrom and spreads over the universe, perishing when our life ceases or persisting after our death.  As they go from flower to flower collecting more honey than themselves and their offspring can