From The Magus by John Fowles, Chapter 61--
'As Doctor Conchis has observed in his The Midcentury Predicament:
"The rebel with no specific gift for rebellion is destined to become
the drone; and even this metaphor is inexact, since the drone has at
least a small chance of fecundating the queen, whereas the human
rebel-drone is deprived even of that small chance and may finally see
himself as totally sterile, lacking not only the brilliant life-success
of the queens but even the humble satisfactions of the workers in the
human hive. Such a personality is reduced to mere wax, a mere receiver
of impressions; and this condition is the very negation of the basic
drive in him - to rebel. It is no wonder that in middle age many such
failed rebels, rebels turned self-conscious drones, aware of their
susceptibility to intellectual vogues, adopt a mask of cynicism that
cannot hide their more or less paranoiac sense of having been betrayed
by life.'"
