MORE EFFECTIVE, LESS CLEVER STRATEGIES

If you place in a bottle half a dozen bees and the same number of flies, and
lay the bottle horizontally, with its base [the closed end] to the window, you
will find that the bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion or hunger, in
their endeavor to discover an [opening] through the glass; while the flies, in
less than two minutes, will all have sallied forth through the neck on the opposite
side It is [the bees'] love of flight, it is their very intelligence, that
is their undoing in this experiment. They evidently imagine that the issue
from every prison must be where the light shines clearest; and they act in
accordance, and persist in too-logical action. To [bees] glass is a supernatural
mystery .. . and, the greater their intelligence, the more inadmissible,
more incomprehensible, will the strange obstacle appear. Whereas the
featherbrained flies, careless of logic . . . flutter wildly hither and thither,
and meeting here the good fortune that often waits on the simple . . . necessarily
end up by discovering the friendly opening that restores their liberty
to them.