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Meditations – Marcus Aurelius

A great help to keeping these claims to virtue fresh in your mind will be to keep your mind on the gods, remembering that what they want is not servile flattery but the development of all rational beings into their own image; they want the fig tree to do the proper work of a fig tree, the dog of a dog, the bee of a bee – and man the proper work of man.

We all work together to the same end, some with conscious attention, others without knowing it – just as Heraclitus, I think, says that even people asleep are workers in the factory of all that happens in the world.  One person contributes in this way, another in that; and there is room even for the critic who tries to oppose or destroy the production – the world had need for him too.  So it remains for you to decide in which category you place yourself.  Certainly He who governs the Whole will make good use of you and welcome you into some part of the joint workforce; but just make sure that your part is not that of the cheap and vulgar line in the comedy, as noted by Chrysippus

Does the sun presume to do the work of the rain god, or Asclepius that of the goddess of harvest?  And what of each of the stars?  Is it not that they are different, but work together to the same end?

What does not benefit the hive does not benefit the bee either.