SELECTED PAPERS 



'To train young people to grind lenses, and to found a sort of school 

 for this purpose, I can't see there'd be much use: because many 

 students at Leyden have already been fired by my discoveries and my 

 lens-grinding, and three lens-grinders have gone there in consequence ; 

 to whom the students have repaired, to learn how to grind lenses. But 

 what's come of it? Nothing, as far as I know : because most students 

 go there to make money out of science, or to get a reputation in the 

 learned world. But in lens-grinding, and discovering things hidden 

 from our sight, these count for nought. And I 'm satisfied too that not 

 one man in a thousand is capable of such study, because it needs much 

 time, and spending much money; and you must always keep on think- 

 ing about these things, if you are to get any results. And over and 

 above all, most men are not curious to know: nay, some even make 

 no bones about saying: What does it matter whether we know this 

 or not?' * 



Even though, after a lapse of 250 years, our opinions as to the econ- 

 omic importance of the microbial world may differ from those held 

 by Van Leeuwenhoek, I should not wish to be counted among those 

 to whom knowledge is important only if in a material sense one 'can 

 get something out of it'. I, too, am not insensitive to the fascination 

 which the study of nature and the struggle to penetrate into its tenaci- 

 ously guarded secrets holds for the investigator. Moreover, I keenly 

 realize that the study of general microbiology is a primary prerequisite 

 also for future progress in the realm of microbiological applications, 

 and this at the same time justifies the inclusion of this purely scientific 

 subject in the curriculum of a technological university. 



In a noteworthy paper Rahn [1921] has recently made a plea for 

 theoretical bacteriology which he characterizes as the foster-child 

 among the sciences. He points out that, in contradistinction to most 

 of the latter, in Germany bacteriology has been able to develop only 

 as an accessory, as the handmaiden principally of medicine and agri- 

 cultural science, from the very start. Not a single German university 

 can boast of the inclusion of an institute for theoretical bacteriology; 

 nowhere does bacteriology find a refuge where, in peace and quiet, it 

 may be studied for its own sake. 



It is true that bacteriology, as a subdivision of botany, can right- 



* Ed. note: This passage has been copied from Clifford Dobell's [1932] superb 

 translation of Van Leeuwenhoek's reply (p. 325). 



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