The bee could hardly add any thing more. Had his experience been greater, and his reflection deeper, he might have answered, that there are principles in the mind pointing to certain conclusions, and seeking to establish certain beliefs, of which those principles are at once the evidence and the source; and that the impression which now seemed so clearly to point out his course was one of this class. But in the exercise of his young faculties he had not yet arrived at that height of philosophy which could lead him to recur to such principles. He had never come to distinguish between those impressions which have taken possession of the mind by chance, and those which Nature herself has prepared to aid the very weakness of reason. No wonder then, that thus sore pressed by Reason, he seemed to find himself at fault.
Whether these mental conflicts were sufficient to suspend his course entirely, or whether, like a prudent bee, he resolved to act as if nature were right and reason were wrong until he knew nature to be wrong and reason to be right, I am not able to say. But I could not fail to reflect, that if he did finally arrive at the place whither he had been directing his course, he would probably quarrel with all the arrangements in the tree.
It would not occur to him, for instance, why such particular art should be observed in constructing the cells of the comb as the bee has ever been known to observe. Why must they always be made with just six sides to them, and no more? Why could they not, upon occasion, be constructed with three or four sides, or even round, equally as well? Surely a curve is more beautiful than a combination of straight lines, with angular points to disturb the mind; and variety is undoubtedly essential to all harmony. But if six sides are to be preferred, why not have the same number for the roof and floor? and why should they be always constructed with one particular inclination? These and other rules, which the bee has hitherto followed with such admirable but unconscious wisdom, his uninstructed reason would be slow to deduce from obvious first principles. He would perhaps be no better a mathematician than man himself, with whom centuries succeeded one another before he had followed the discursive and mazy track to the point whence is seen the just and convenient architecture of the bee.
We can hardly suppose that under such circumstances he would not become a confirmed skeptic; rejecting all truths which his peculiar reasonings would not demonstrate; and failing by reason to demonstrate those truths which to him are of the greatest consequence. All this would not be because he had reason, nor because he exercised it, but because he exercised it imperfectly. And yet he would seem to use it very much as some modern philosophers recommend.
II.
When the merchant who trades abroad is about to launch upon the ocean the ship which contains perhaps the whole of his fortune, he is naturally anxious as to what may be its fate while entrusted to the winds and waves, and is solicitous to provide, so far as he can, against the possibility of ruin by its loss. His course is therefore to go to the insurance office, inform the agent what he is about to do, and ask for indemnity against risk.
The insurance office was established for the express purpose of alleviating such disasters as his would be, should his fears be realized, and his case is taken into immediate consideration. The agent regards the route of the proposed voyage, and the seas over which the ship is to pass; the season of the year in which she sails, and the storms that are commonly incident thereto; he deliberates on the propriety of insuring, and if the risk be not too great, fixes the premium to be paid by the merchant. Upon the receipt of this sum, he gives him a writing, binding the company in case the vessel does not arrive safely at the destined port, to pay to the merchant the estimated value of the ship and cargo.
Now the sum which the company receives on this occasion is but a small part of what they may be obliged to return, and which they must pay to the merchant in case the ship insured does not arrive at the end of her voyage. Yet by such transactions as these neither the company is impoverished nor by his loss is he who adventures undone. The company is not impoverished, because in the whole extent of its transactions it receives from those who do not lose as much as its funds are diminished by those who do. The loser himself is not undone, because by contributing his share, and enabling the company to carry on its mitigating operations, he becomes, upon his loss, entitled to a full portion of relief. And indeed in this manner it happens that loss falleth lightly upon many, rather than heavily upon few; and those who, to the benefit of mankind, would trust their all to be carried down to the sea in ships, are not deterred therefrom by the fear of possible ruin.
When the astronomer, for the convenience of the navigator, in enabling him to ascertain his place upon the trackless ocean, determines what will take place at immense distances from our earth, and calculates at what exact though distant periods of time the satellites that revolve about Jupiter may with the telescope be ascertained to pass through the planet's shadow, his conclusions are all founded on a knowledge of causes, and of their methods of operation. The observations of Kepler and Herschel, and the sublime reasonings of Newton and Laplace, founded on fact or on axioms, and tending to pertinent conclusions, are all concerned in these useful calculations. Not so in proceedings like those to which we have referred. There parties act not more from their knowledge of causes than their ignorance of them. Neither the insurer nor the insured knows what favorable winds may waft the ship prosperously on her voyage, nor what tempestuous seas may threaten her with destruction. Did the one know that in the end she would be lost, he would not insure. Did the other know that she would arrive safely at the end of her voyage, he would not desire to be insured. But while the one has hopes and the other fears, yet both are ignorant. They are able, by the judicious exercise of the faculties which God has given them, to adopt a course which, without impairing the welfare of the one, shall tend to secure the safety of the other.
The principle which in these cases determines the insurer whether to insure, and if so at what premium, is a principle upon which the pursuit of happiness very often requires us to act. This principle is, that where a case is under consideration where particular causes cannot be taken into account, we are most strongly to expect such an event as has happened or as we know will happen, in the greatest number of possible cases; unless some particular reason appears which we are certain should make us expect a different result. The principle has a deep foundation in the nature of the human mind; and nowhere is the mutual adaptation between the mind and the external world more clearly seen. Properly applied, it teaches man to look for an existence beyond the grave.