XXll INTRODUCTION 



hypothesis to interest and to arouse, as an electric cur- 

 rent to stimulate the too often inert substance of the 

 human brain. He said: Je voudrais voir tout marcher 

 autour de moi du mane train que moi. In his "Discours 

 aux etudiants^^ he has expressed himself also as follows: 



"The free disinterested search for truth is useful, in 

 and of itself, from the delight it brings to the one who 

 follows it, from the independence of spirit it begets, from 

 the deep sentiment it develops of liberty and of respon- 

 sibility. I dare maintain even for this inner work that 

 it has no need of looking to or obtaining the suffrages of 

 other men. It is sufficient that we have the conscious- 

 ness of being in our place and of doing our duty honestly. 

 'Live,' said Pasteur, 'in the serene peace of the labora- 

 tories and the libraries.' I am sure of remaining faithful 

 to his thought in adding: You will not always find glory 

 there, you will never find fortune there, but you will 

 experience there the dehght of every day being something 

 more than the day before, and of having brought into 

 the world your share of the truth." 



"Do not take my word for things but be enamored of 

 independence," he said. "The fruitful periods of science 

 are those in which dogmas are taken." 



"You esteem me too highly," he writes. "There are 

 a hundred thousand Frenchmen who are as important as 

 I am. I differ from them only in that I have been helped 

 more by science. We must distinguish between those 

 who have rare qualities and those who march in the 

 ranks with cominon f[ualities, made productive by will 

 and labor." 



The national instruction, he said, refiecting on the war 

 of 1870, is not only insufficient but false. Based on 

 rhetoric and on classical studies, it ornaments the mind, 

 but does not strengthen it much; rather we may say it 

 weakens it, since it instills the principle of authority, 



