Bees appear to remember the light, while working at the opposite side of the wheel. Men, as yet, are detached, lost in the heresies of self and strife. Only a few visionaries have peered beyond the petty reach of the optic nerve, to perceive that this, which we make so much of, is but the hell-portion; that this appearance of ours in pounds is a mere dressing up in materials of earth to endure the dark and low vibration of the wheel's most downward sweep. These few visionaries, always singing the joy of the other arcs of the cycle, somehow keep the dream alive,--the dream that appears already to be the essential blessedness and magic of life in the hive. All mysticism seeks to teach us this single point which the bees seem to have learned so well--to transcend time and space in labour; to put off the sense of separation and strife, to hearken to the soul's own song of equality and sufficing days. We must be pushed to the last reaches of pain before we learn this secret. We have to penetrate the darkness before we earn this flash which swings wide the portals of joy. Joy is the most potent thing in the universe. The bee-queen mother weaves race after race of progeny out of the incredible dynamics of an instant's joy. Each cell that she fills with life is a living fragment of her nuptial feast. Fusion is ecstasy, parturition is pain. The many become one; that is heaven. The one becomes many again; that is earth and hell. Integration and diffusion--the same story told in the hives and ant-hills, in the strolling winds and swinging seas, in the hearts and marts of men, in matings everywhere. * * * * * The original idea was to use the title, _The Hive_, in relation to the happy intensity of Stonestudy days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the name, because of its revelations in regard to the new social order; the pure and instant abnegation of the self to the community; the active acceptance of the precept: _That which is good for the one is good for the many, and that which is good for the many is good for the one_. We cannot lose ourselves long in our own misery when we realise the glory of yesterday, and the more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow. We cannot continue to feel our own isolation when we perceive a brother in the eye of a stranger, when we perceive the sons of God in the eyes of passing men. At length appears the task ahead--the great Fatherland, the Planetary Hive. I have taken the hint from the new race children, that to transcend pain we must make joy of it. Given the hint, one realises that the masters of all ages have told the same story--how to make light of human shadow, how to make lustrous our own darkness. No matter what science says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute means the same thing; this is the marriage at Cana, the turning of water into wine; this is the passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute base metals into gold; this is healing; this is regeneration.