152 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



<< 



. The boldest conceptions/' he wrote, ''the most 

 legitimate speculations can be embodied but from the day when 

 they are consecrated by observation and experiment. Labora 

 tories and discoveries are correlative terms; if you suppress 

 laboratories, Physical Science will become stricken with barren- 

 ness and death; it will become mere powerless information in- 

 stead of a science of progress and futurity; give it back its 

 laboratories, and life, fecundity and power will reappear. Away 

 from their laboratories, physicists and chemists are but dis- 

 armed soldiers on a battlefield. 



''The deduction from these principles is evident: if the con- 

 quests useful to humanity touch your heart — if you remain 

 confounded before the marvels of electric telegraphy, of anaes- 

 thesia, of the daguerreotype and many other admirable dis- 

 coveries — if you are jealous of the share your country may boast 

 in these wonders — then, I implore you, take some interest in 

 those sacred dwellings ineaningly described as lah oratories. 

 Ask that they may be multiplied and completed. They are the 

 temples of the future, of riches and of comfort. There 

 humanity grows greater, better, stronger; there she can learn 

 to read the works of Nature, works of progress and universal 

 harmony, while humanity's own works are too often those of 

 barbarism, of fanaticism and of destruction. 



"Some nations have felt the wholesome breath of truth. 

 Rich and large laboratories have been growing in Germany for 

 the last thirty years, and many more are still being built; at 

 Berlin and at Bonn two palaces, worth four million francs each, 

 are being erected for chemical studies. St. Petersburg has 

 spent three and a half million francs on a Physiological Insti- 

 tute; England, America, Austria, Bavaria have made most 

 generous sacrifices. Italy too has made a start. 



"And France? 



"France has not yet begun. . . .'' He mentioned the 

 sepulchre-like cellar where the great physiologist, Claude 

 Bernard, was obliged to live; "and where?" wrote Pasteur. 

 ' ' In the very establishment which bears the name of the mother 

 country, the College de France!" The laboratory of the Sor- 

 bonne was no better — a damp, dark room, one metre below the 

 level of the street. He went on, demonstrating that the pro- 

 vincial Faculties were as destitute as those of Paris. "Who 

 will believe me when I affirm that the budget of Public Instruc- 

 tion provides not a penny towards the progress o^ physical 



