Justice and the King of Bees1
Leonardo da Vinci's Observations on Justice
(From the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci)
WE MAY COMPARE the virtue of justice to the king of the bees, who orders and arranges everything on a system, because some bees are ordered to go among the flowers, others are ordered to work, others to fight with wasps, others to take away the dirt, others to accompany and attend the king. And when he becomes old and has no wings they carry him, and if any one of them fail in his duty he is punished without any forgiveness.
Endnotes
1 Leonardo da Vinci, ‘’The Notebooks of Leonard da Vinci’’ (arranged and rendered into English by Edward MacCurdy) (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1938), Vol. I, 471. ⇑
