114 PASTEUR: THE HISTORY OF A MIND 



IX 



DISCUSSION WITH BASTIAN 



The only discussion which produced fruit in the field 

 in which it arose was that raised by Dr. Bastian. Like 

 Fremy, Bastian had taken up the question a little 

 thoughtlessly, without being very familiar with it, and 

 without any idea of its difficulties. His first experiments 

 were not of any great value; but he had tenacity, fertility 

 of mind, the love of the experimental method, if not an 

 understanding of it, and he has given us ideas, or rather 

 let us say he forced Pasteur to gain ideas, the absence 

 of which had hindered the progress of science. All our 

 present technicjue has arisen from the objections made 

 by Bastian to the w^ork of Pasteur on spontaneous genera- 

 tions. It was Bastian who made us see that this work 

 which had been so vaunted, abounded in false interpre- 

 tations, which, he said, invalidated its conclusions. It 

 was Pasteur and his pupils, Joubert and Chamberland, 

 who showed that even if the interpretation had some- 

 times been inexact the conclusions w^ere none the less well 

 founded. 



Bastian's first attack was a blow straight from the 

 shoulder. ''You maintain," he said, "that urine boiled 

 and preserved in the presence of superheated air, remains 

 clear and sterile because you have allowed no germ 

 to penetrate there. I say, on the contrary, that the 

 germs have nothing to do with it, and that the sterility 

 of the liquid is due only to the fact that, in spite of all 

 your care and your dexterity, you have not known how 

 to reunite in it the physical and chemical conditions 

 necessary for spontaneous generation. The proof of it 

 is this: if I saturate this urine with a little potash boiled 

 and freed from germs, so as to render the urine neutral. 



