And now we may go back to our bees’ nests, and to our school-benches, in peace; able to assure our little Agnes, and the like of her, that, whatever hornets and locusts and serpents may have been made for, this at least is true,—that we may set, and are commanded to set, an eternal difference between ourselves and them, by neither carrying daggers at our sides, nor poison in our mouths: and that the choice for us is stern, between being kings over all these creatures, by innocence to which they cannot be exalted, or more weak, miserable and detestable than they, in resolute guilt to which they cannot fall. Of their instincts, I believe we have rather held too high than too low estimate, because we have not enough recognized or respected our own. We do not differ from the lower creatures by not possessing instinct, but by possessing will and conscience, to order our innate impulses to the best ends. The great lines of Pope on this matter, however often quoted fragmentarily, are I think scarcely ever understood in their conclusion. [34] Let us, for once, read them to their end:— “See him, from Nature, rising slow to Art, To copy instinct then was reason’s part. Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake: Go,—from the creatures thy instructions take, Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield, Learn from the beasts the physic of the field, Thy arts of building from the bee receive, Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave. Here too all forms of social union find, And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind. Here subterranean works and cities see, There, towns aerial on the waving tree; Learn each small people’s genius, policies, The ants’ republic, and the realm of bees: How those in common all their wealth bestow, And anarchy without confusion know; And these for ever, though a monarch reign, Their separate cells and properties maintain. Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state— Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate; In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw, Entangle justice in her net of law, And right, too rigid, harden into wrong— Still for the strong too weak, the weak, too strong. Yet go, and thus o’er all the creatures sway, Thus let the wiser make the rest obey, And for those arts mere instinct could afford Be crowned as monarchs, or as gods ador’d.”