224 EVOLUTION 



methean control of new energies; and here 

 fitly also in turn Kelvin to control the yet 

 subtler and more potent spark of electricity 

 with inventions, each a literal masterpiece 

 of craft subtlety and of manual skill. Kel- 

 vin, whom in illustrious old age the world 

 delighted to honour, was thus as truly the 

 master-smith of Glasgow as had been Watt 

 before him; so the spacious physical labo- 

 ratories of every university in the world to- 

 day are still above all the local extensions of 

 William Thomson's cellar- workshop. 



So Lord Lister is not to be understood 

 primarily even as surgeon-in-chief : his place 

 in history, immortal though it be, is also 

 humble, humbler even than that of the 

 plebeian branch of the profession, the bar- 

 ber's. For he with his antiseptic surgery 

 is "the shepherd with his tarbox by his side"; 

 more simply still, since full shepherd-craft 

 is far beyond his ken, he is the ' tar-boy," 

 who waits upon the shepherd, ready to put 

 on his dab of antiseptic wherever needed. 

 So Pasteur was not essentially a magnate 

 of the Legion of Honour, the member of two 

 Academies at home, and of all abroad; not 

 even primarily the great chemist. He was 

 a tanner's son, born and bred, that is, amid 

 the greatest and oldest of antiseptic processes, 

 and developing and applying it all his life. 



