1882—1884 34n 



pkiiosophic questions. He was listened to with attentive 

 emotion, and when he showed the error of Positi\dsm in 

 attempting to do away with the idea of the Infinite, and pro- 

 claimed the instinctive and necessary worship by Man of the 

 great Mystery, he seemed to bring out all the weakness and 

 the dignity of ]\Ian — passing through this world bowed under 

 the law of Toil and with the prescience of the Ideal — into a 

 startling and consolatory light. 



One of the privileges of the Academician who receives a new 

 member is to remain seated in his armchair before a table, and 

 to comfortably prepare to read his own speech, in answer, 

 often in contradiction, to the first. Renan, visibly enjoying 

 the presidential chair, smiled at the audience with complex 

 feelings, understood by some who were his assiduous readers. 

 Respect for so much work achieved by a scientist of the first 

 rank in the world ; a gratified feeling of the honour which 

 reverted to France; some personal pleasure in welcoming such 

 a man in the name of the Academic, and, at the same time, in 

 the opportunity for a light and ironical answer to Pasteur's 

 beliefs — all these sensations were perceptible in Renan 's 

 powerful face, the benevolence of whose soft blue eyes was 

 corrected by the redoubtable keenness of the smile. 



He began in a caressing voice by acknowledging that the 

 Academy was somewhat incompetent to judge of the work 

 and glory of Pasteur. ''But," he added, with graceful 

 eloquence, "apart from the ground of the doctrine, which is 

 not within our attributions, there is. Sir, a greatness on which 

 our experience of the human mind gives us a right to 

 pronounce an opinion; something which we recognize in the 

 most varied applications, which belongs in the same degree to 

 Galileo, Pascal, Michael-Angelo, or i\Ioliere: something which 

 gives sublimity to the poet, depth to the philosopher, fascina- 

 tion to the orator, divination to the scientist. 



''That common basis of all beautiful and true work, that 

 divine fire, that indefinable breath which inspires Science, 

 Literature, and Art — ^we have found it in you, Sir — it is 

 Grenius. No one has walked so surely through the circles of 

 elemental nature; your scientific life is like unto a luminous 

 tract in the great night of the Infinitesimally Small, in that 

 last abyss where life is born." 



After a brilliant and rapid enumeration of the Pastorian 

 discoveries, congratulating Pasteur on having touched through 



