The cause of this discontent reveals itself in the words which she addressed to her most intimate woman friend. “Why is it,” she said, “that no one loves me? I could give more than most women, and while the most ordinary women are loved, as for me, I am not loved.”[169] It is, in fact, impossible to regard the celibacy of persons devoted to religion or to scientific studies as the beginning of a special organisation analogous to that of worker bees. However, it is still probable that in the human race a special differentiation has been established for the accomplishment of different and essential functions. The organisation of human societies has certainly not followed the path by which social insects attained the formation of sexless individuals. It much more closely resembles what has taken place in some isolated animal types. A solitary bee, named _Halictus quadricinctus_ (Fig. 27), is characterised by the fact that the female does not die when she has laid her last eggs, as generally happens amongst insects, but remains alive to cherish her offspring. This final portion of her life does not last long, and the bee cannot play the prominent part of governess in a society of insects organised by this specialisation of elderly females. In the human race the individual life lasts longer and a division of labour takes place in the fashion suggested by _Halictus quadricinctus_. [Illustration: FIG. 27.—_Halictus quadricinctus._ (After Buffon.)] An ordinary woman ceases to be fertile at between forty and fifty years old, that is to say, at a time when, according to statistics, she has still on the average twenty years to live. During this long period, she can perform an extremely useful function in society, a function resembling that of the old mothers of _Halictus quadricinctus_, and consisting chiefly in the bringing up and education of the children. Who does not know the extraordinary devotion of grandmothers, and, as a general rule, of old women, who are extremely useful in bringing up children. And none the less, it must not be forgotten that, actually, old age begins too soon, that it is not what it ought to be under normal conditions, and that human life itself does not last nearly so long as it ought to do in ideal conditions. We may predict that when science occupies the preponderating place in human society that it ought to have, and when knowledge of hygiene is more advanced, human life will become much longer and the part of old people will become much more important than it is to-day.