Pollen Related Quotes

And so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one’s passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flower, of aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be able to expel melancholy from the soul.

Nature is a living whole,' he later said, not a 'dead aggregate'. One single life had been poured over stones, plants, animals and humankind. It was this 'universal profusion with which life is everywhere distributed' that most impressed Humboldt. Even the atmosphere carried the kernels of future life - pollen, insect eggs and seeds. Life was everywhere and those 'organic powers are incessantly at work', he wrote. Humboldt was not so much interested in finding new isolated facts but in connecting them. Individual phenomena were only important 'in their relation to the whole', he explained.

As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man. A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bee's existence. Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension. All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and nations.

A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bee’s existence. Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension. All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and nations.

What do human beings contribute, Suwelo was thinking morosely, as he waited one afternoon for Miss Lissie to appear. Her story about the animal cousins had moved him and each day he found himself more conscious of his own nonhuman “relatives” in the world. The bees contributed honey, but not really—it was taken from them. What, he now wondered, did the bees eat themselves; surely they didn’t make honey for human beings. It was the flowers that contributed honey to both bees and people, the flowers that were always giving something: beauty, cheerfulness, pollen, and seeds. They did not care who saw them, who, they gave to. And on his feet, Suwelo also realized, with disgust, he was wearing moccasins made of leather. What a euphemism, “leather.” A real nonword. Nowhere in it was concealed the truth of what leather was. Something’s skin. And his tortoiseshell glasses. He took them off and peered shortsightedly at them, holding them at arm’s length. But they were imitation tortoiseshell. Plastic, probably. But this made him even gloomier, for he knew the only reason for imitation anything was that the source of the real thing had dried up. There were probably no more tortoises left to kill. And what, anyway, of plastic? It was plentiful, cheap. But even it came from somewhere. Of what was plastic made? What died? He knew it was a product of petroleum, of oil, and so he assumed plastic was made out of the very lifeblood of the planet. When all the oil was drained, he imagined the planet quaking and shrinking in on itself, like an orange that has been sucked to death.