A BIOLOGICAL PHENOMENON 53 



an outsider to understand their logical sequence. Such a 

 reader will gladly skip a table of figures, but if the work is in 

 itself new and original he will perhaps be interested in the 

 mechanism of the development of the ideas, hypotheses, 

 experiments, and results of the author. In other words he 

 would be interested in the manner in which the results have 

 been obtained as much as in the results themselves. 



This point of view is quite different from that of vulgariza- 

 tion. The vulgarizer translates articles and books which are 

 written in a conventional jargon meant to economize thought 

 and time, into a language which is accessible to the unspecialized 

 pubHc. He eliminates mathematics which are nothing else 

 but a condensed form of mental stenography. But he does 

 not introduce the more interesting human touch, or if he 

 does so, it is because a particular phase of the work in question 

 presents a specially picturesque, striking, or amusing aspect. 

 He does not try to extricate the general Hne, the slim psycho- 

 logical thread which binds together the successive stages of 

 the evolution of a discovery in the brain of a scientist. Yet 

 it is the romance of a discovery which could seemingly be 

 capable of fixing the attention of the layman. This novel, 

 once lived, is destroyed. Only the material conclusions of 

 each chapter are allowed to subsist. 



It is true that the vulgarizer or commentator would find it 

 very difficult to reassemble the pieces of the puzzle furnished 

 by scientific papers, so as to be able to unite these elements 

 in the logical and harmonious order which led to their birth. 

 It would be quite impossible for him to divulge the succession 

 of psychological facts of which they are the fruit, had he not 

 assisted in person at all the different phases of the work or 

 had the author not taken him into his intimate confidence. 

 A few such examples, however, exist. The most celebrated is 

 certainly the admirable Life of Pasteur by Rene Vallery-Radot. 

 The realization of this monumental and profoundly moving 

 fresco is due to the family bond existing between the genial 

 scientist and the author. 



In English-speaking countries, however, didactic v/orks are 



