At the outside it
is but a generation or two off. It is one huge murmuring Hive--one
universal Hive just the size of the round earth. The bees have been
before us; they have solved the riddle towards which we in darkness
have been groping.
The Old Maid shuddered visibly. "What a terrible idea!" she said.
"To us," replied the Minor Poet; "not to those who will come after
us. The child dreads manhood. To Abraham, roaming the world with
his flocks, the life of your modern City man, chained to his office
from ten to four, would have seemed little better than penal
servitude."
"My sympathies are with the Abrahamitical ideal," observed the
Philosopher.
"Mine also," agreed the Minor Poet. "But neither you nor I
represent the tendency of the age. We are its curiosities. We, and
such as we, serve as the brake regulating the rate of progress. The
genius of species shows itself moving in the direction of the
organised community--all life welded together, controlled by one
central idea. The individual worker is drawn into the factory.
Chippendale today would have been employed sketching designs; the
chair would have been put together by fifty workers, each one
trained to perfection in his own particular department.
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