72 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



tides, a very active formation was taking place on the muti- 

 lated part; after a few hours the crystal had again assumed its 

 original shape. The healing up of wounds, said Pasteur, might 

 be compared to that physical phenomenon. Claude Bernard, 

 much struck later on by these experiments of Pasteur's and 

 recalling them with much praise, said in his turn — 



' ' These reconstituting phenomena of crystalline redintegration 

 afford a complete comparison with those presented by living 

 beings in the case of a wound more or less deep. In the crystal 

 as in the animal, the damaged part heals, gradually taking back 

 its original shape, and in both cases the reformation of tissue 

 is far more active in that particular part than under ordinary 

 evolutive conditions. ' ' 



Thus those two great minds saw affinities hidden under facts 

 apparently far apart. Other similarities yet more unexpected 

 carried Pasteur away towards the highest region of speculation. 

 He spoke with enthusiasm of molecular dissymmetry; he saw 

 it everywhere in the universe. These studies in dissymmetry 

 gave birth twenty years later to a new science arising immedi- 

 ately out of his work, viz. stereo-chemistry, or the chemistry of 

 space. He also saw in molecular dissymmetry the influence of 

 a great cosmic cause — 



^'The universe," he said one day, ^*is a dissymmetrical 

 whole. I am inclined to think that life, as manifested to us, 

 must be a function of the dissymmetry of the universe and of 

 the consequences it produces. The universe is dissymmetrical; 

 for, if the whole of the bodies which compose the solar system 

 were placed before a glass moving with their individual move- 

 ments, the image in the glass could not be superposed to the 

 reality. Even the movement of solar life is dissymmetrical. 

 A luminous ray never strikes in a straight line the leaf where 

 vegetable life creates organic matter. Terrestrial magnetism, 

 the opposition which exists between the north and south poles 

 in a magnet, that offered us by the two electricities positive 

 and negative, are but resultants from dissymmetrical actions 

 and movements." 



''Life," he said again, "is dominated by dissymmetrical 

 actions. I can even foresee that all living species are primor- 

 dially, in their structure, in their external forms, functions of 

 cosmic dissymmetry." 



And there appeared to him to be a barrier between mineral 

 or artificial products and products formed under the influence 



