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But enough on this point; were I to cite every instance I should never have done.  To return to the queen, whose position in the hive, and the part that she plays therein, we shall most fitly describe by declaring her to be the captive heart of the city, and the centre around which its intelligence revolves.  Unique sovereign though she be, she is also the royal servant, the responsible delegate of love, and its captive custodian.  Her people serve her and venerate her; but they never forget that it is not to her person that their homage is given, but to the mission that she fulfils, and the destiny she represents.  It would not be easy for us to find a human republic whose scheme comprised more of the desires of our planet; or a democracy that offered an independence more perfect and rational, combined with a submission more logical and more complete.  And nowhere, surely, should we discover more painful and absolute sacrifice.  Let it not be imagined that I admire this sacrifice to the extent that I admire its results.  It were evidently to be desired that these results might be obtained at the cost of less renouncement and suffering.  But, the principle once accepted,—­and this is needful, perhaps, in the scheme of our globe,—­its organisation compels our wonder.  Whatever the human truth on this point may be, life, in the hive, is not looked on as a series of more or less pleasant hours, whereof it is wise that those moments only should be soured and embittered that are essential for maintaining existence.  The bees regard it as a great common duty, impartially distributed amongst them all, and tending towards a future that goes further and further back ever since the world began.  And, for the sake of this future, each one renounces more than half of her rights and her joys.  The queen bids farewell to freedom, the light of day, and the calyx of flowers; the workers give five or six years of their life, and shall never know love, or the joys of maternity.  The queen’s brain turns to pulp, that the reproductive organs may profit; in the workers these organs atrophy, to the benefit of their intelligence.  Nor would it be fair to allege that the will plays no part in all these renouncements.  We have seen that each worker’s larva can be transformed into a queen if lodged and fed on the royal plan; and similarly could each royal larva be turned into worker if her food were changed and her cell reduced.  These mysterious elections take place every day in the golden shade of the hive.  It is not chance that controls them, but a wisdom whose deep loyalty, gravity, and unsleeping watchfulness man alone can betray:  a wisdom that makes and unmakes, and keeps careful watch over all that happens within and without the city.  If sudden flowers abound, or the queen grow old, or less fruitful; if population increase, and be pressed for room, you then shall find that the bees will proceed to rear royal cells.  But these cells may be destroyed