small; his work realises, at the point of contact between life and inert matter, the scientific effort of the century.

This effort, until then, had been scattered. All felt that the secret of origins lay hidden in the apparition or the transformation of inferior organisms; but how was Nature to be caught in the act? Living dusts, phantasms of the mind or dream conceptions,-who would dare to proclaim the accession to science of those mysteries which stand on the very threshold of the being? An instrument of minute and penetrating research-the microscope— a method even more minute and more penetrating, the experimental method, set doubts aside and deciphered the mystery.

A general survey of the wide field over which scientific conquest now manoeuvred, shows us a flood of light thrown over everything, from the mechanism of the stellar system to the extreme progress of the highest and most developed organisms. Astronomy, geology, prehistoric paleontology, microbiology, general botany, histology, phenomena of fecundation-all these submitted to diverse doctrines, contrary principles, hazardous hypotheses, sectarian disputes, served to hasten the increase of rapidly-growing knowledge. Cuvier was in the right, but so was his much maltreated rival, Lamarck. Pouchet 2 stimulated the genius of Pasteur. The problem is as wide as the world itself. Yet it is now felt to be "not beyond human strength."

1 George Cuvier, b. 1769, Montbéliard, a member of the Académie des Sciences, director of the Natural History Museum, d. 1832.

2 Félix Archimède Pouchet, b. Rouen 1800, a member of the Académie des Sciences, d. 1872.

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The following passages are extracted from the note-book in which Pasteur' wrote down thoughts which he looked upon as a programme of work; they are perhaps the most profound words uttered by man concerning the world which surrounds and crushes him: "To state that life is in the germ; that it is but a transmission since the origin of creation; that this germ has the property of evolution, whether in the development of the intelligence and the will, or, in the same way, in the formation and development of organs. To compare this evolution with that which is latent in the germ of chemical species, which is in the chemical molecule. The evolution of the germ of the chemical molecule consists of crystallisation, in the form which it assumes, in physical and chemical properties. These properties are potential in the germ of the molecule in the same manner as the organs and tissues of animals and plants exist potentially in their respective germs. Add: nothing is more curious than to push the comparison of living and mineral species into the study of wounds in the substance of either of these species and of the healing of these wounds by nutrition; a nutrition which, for living beings, comes from within, and for the others from without, through the medium of crystallisation." "

2

See concerning the works of Pasteur, M. Vallery Radot's complete and most interesting study, La Vie de Pasteur, Paris, 1900. English translation by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire, London, 1901.

2 This idea of evolution, borrowed partly from German doctrines, which owed it to Spinoza and Descartes, haunts most contemporary brains. Here are three passages from Renan's Avenir de la Science, written in 1848, but only published in 1890, which give the counterpart, applied to Historical Science and to Philosophy, of the principle which Pasteur recognises in a scientific

So, in this first passage, the progress of the world is seized in the ovum, followed out in evolution, and observed in the universal thirst for the survival of the type by healing or nutrition, and reproduction. To be, to evolve, and to survive, these alternately fruitful and preserving desires are universal; they become manifest as soon as matter is set in motionand even in its mineral, motionless, condition-in order to reach organisation and life.

But we have here a still bolder view-indeed, an incomparable programme of studies, for which one human life was not long enough. There have been a few such men, whose genius surpassed their works, so that the latter remained unfinished: "I have begun some experiments on crystallisation which will lead to much if they yield any positive results.1 You know that I believe in a dissymetrical cosmic influence which presides over the molecular organisation of the immediate principles essential to life, and that, in consequence, the species of the kingdoms of life are, in their structure, their formation, and the disposition of their tissues, in relation with the movements of the universe. For many of those species, if not for all, the sun is the primum movens of nutrition, but I believe in

connection: "One more step, and it will be proclaimed that true philosophy is the science of humanity and that the science of a being which is in a perpetual state of evolution can only be its history" (p. 132). "The soul is taken for a fixed, permanent being, to be analysed like a natural body, whereas it is but the ever-variable resultant of the multiple and complex facts of life. The soul is individual evolution as God is universal evolution" (p. 181). "The great progress of modern fact has been to substitute for the category of the being the category of the becoming" (p. 182).

1 See Life of Pasteur, p. 50 and following.

another relationship which may affect the whole organisation, because it is the cause of the molecular dissymetry which is special to the chemical species of life. I wish, through experimentation, to succeed in finding a few indications concerning the nature of this great dissymetrical cosmic influence. It must be, it may be, electricity, magnetism. I have several experiments to try; if one of them succeeds, we shall have work for the rest of our lives, and in one of the greatest subjects that man can touch; for I should not despair of discovering in that way a very deep, unexpected, and extraordinary modification of the animal and vegetable species."

Pasteur thus discovered, at the very root of the being, a most striking phenomenon. This is a deduplication, a bifurcation, animate matter parting from inanimate matter, and beginning its sinister" evolution through dissymetry. Full of hopes and also of light, the master's genius invokes the intervention of those cosmic forces which are already known-solar heat, electricity, magnetism. Without daring to step beyond the threshold, he points, in the mystery of things, at a duel between two obscure principles, the right and the left, rest and agitation, stability and effort. Effort, which is life already, rises and draws upwards in contortions; evolutio contorta. This seems like the wail of a suffering, new-born, being. What a scientific affabulation of the legendary Ormuz and Ahriman are these faint lines on the pages of a note-book!

It is only gradually and through the testimony of years that it will be known how deep, how inexhaustible, was the genius of Pasteur. Proud and yet modest, his character reveals itself by the silence in which, until his death, he entertained

these stupendous thoughts. The above lines were written in 1871, at the time when his valiant heart, wounded by the sorrows which crushed his country, still dictated to him words of hope: "My head is full of the most beautiful plans for work. The war had sent my brains out to grass. I am ready for new productions; at any rate I shall try. . . . Come, we will transform the world with our discoveries. How fortunate you are to be young and strong! Oh! that I had a new life of study and work before me! Poor France, beloved country, if only I might contribute to raise thee from thy disasters! . . .

Here was France, so odiously stricken, despised, rejected! At the very moment when she was between the jaws of death she wrenched from life a new solution of the problem of life. In her anguish she did not turn from the religious and scientific anxiety which divided men's minds. Among the cries of the battle-field and the hospital, she remained cool and pensive in her laboratories, watching her crucibles.

Evolution

1

The fame of Darwin's books is well ism known. Nowhere did they provoke deeper emotion than in the land of Lamarck. The Positivist doctrine, which had spread into every mind, found therein an unexpected proof and illustration.

Now, nothing was beyond human knowledge : the process of creation was explained. Man, connected through filiation with the animal species, was dispossessed of his exceptional situation in the universe.

This was not only a scientific revolution, but a

1 Charles Darwin, b. Shrewsbury 1809, d. 1882..