Vernon L. Kellogg

“ Human beings are not equal in these qualities. But a society that is based upon a constant flux of individuals in the community, upon the basis of ability and character, is a moving virile mass; it is not a stratification of classes. Its inspiration is individual initiative. Its stimulus is competition. Its safeguard is education. Its greatest mentor is free speech and voluntary organization for public good. Its expression in legislation is the common sense and common will of the majority. It is the essence of this democracy that progress of the mass must arise from progress of the individual. ”

“ While they watch the conflagrations of the stars and the mighty sailing of the planets through the blackness of space, we watch the work and play and living of our lowly companions on the sun-flooded marshes. They like the cold glittering sky; we like the warm brown earth.
We had been lying quietly on the white salt sand in one of the unroofed marsh rooms for some time this September day before we saw the first wasp begin to work. She was standing on her head, apparently, and biting most energetically with her jaws, cutting a little circle in the salt crust. ”

“ Uno first spoke up.
"They call themselves bees!" she said with scorn and malice.
"Beasts, rather!" said Due similarly.
"No, human beings," said Tre. "Like the daughter of the owner of the garden and her lover. In secret, and against all the customs. Shame and scandal!"
"Drive them out! Kill them!" burst out all the other bees, who had come crowding up at the words of Uno, Due, and Tre. "Call the Amazons! Sting them to death! Hero, the faithless one! Nuova, the silly new bee! Hero, our finest drone! Nuova, the pretty little nurse! Traitors! Kill them!" ”

“ The history of mining is more a history of how mines with mineral in them have not succeeded in becoming mines where the mineral could be profitably got out of them, than of how such mines have succeeded. A successful mine is infinitely more than a hole in the ground with mineral at its bottom. It is railroads and steamers, mills, housing for men, men themselves, organization, system, skill, brains, all-around human capacity. Herbert Hoover is a great miner because he is—I say it bluntly and not from any blind hero-worship—a great man. ”

“ Variation and natural selection.—What individuals survive of the many which are born? Those best fitted for life; those which are a little stronger, a little swifter, a little hardier, a little less readily perceived by their enemies, than the others. They are the winners in the struggle for existence; they are the survivors. And this survival of the fittest, as it is called, is practically a process of selection by Nature. Nature selects the fittest to live and to perpetuate the species. ”

“ To Nuova herself all her life in the cell, from first day to last, must have seemed little more than a sort of dream; a confused dream of not being able to walk or fly, or see or hear, but only to squirm a little, and be hungry and then be fed, and to feel dimly strange growing pains from the rapidly growing legs and wings when they began to come, and of always being rather comfortably warm and sleepy. ”

“ I respond, "and the giant wasp of them all, Pepsis, the queen of the wasp amazons, hunts only the biggest spider of them all, Eurypelma, the tarantula king, and we have seen her do it."
"Well," says Mary, "even if she wants him for her children to eat, it's a real vendetta, isn't it?"
"Indeed it is," I answer, "it's more real, and fiercer, and more relentless, and more persistent than any human vendetta that ever was. For every Pepsis mother in the world is always hunting for Eurypelmas to fight. And not all Corsicans have a vendetta on hand, nor all Kentuckians a feud." ”

“ We are faced with a new orientation of our country to world problems. We face a Europe still at war; still amid social revolutions; some of its peoples still slacking on production; millions starving; and therefore the safety of its civilization is still hanging [Pg 293] by a slender thread. Every wind that blows carries to our shores an infection of social diseases from this great ferment; every convulsion there has an economic reaction upon our own people. If we needed further proof of the interdependence of the world, we have it today in the practical blockade of our export market. ”

“ What are you—a nurse, a wax-maker, or what? Why don't you stick to your work? Why don't you do what you are expected to do? Are you one of those dreadful creatures they call 'new bees'?"
Nuova, although still weak and faint from her jostling and fright, was made angry again by these questions. "I do not know what I am," she said, "but I'd rather die than be just a puppet in this hive. Is all my life cut out for me, and not according to what I want to do and can do, but just according to rules made by somebody I don't know anything about and who doesn't know anything about me?" ”