MICROBE AND LIFE 



The privilege to address the combined sections at the annual plenary 

 session poses for the speaker a difficult problem in connexion with the 

 choice of his subject. The result of my assiduous meditations has been 

 that I shall attempt to give you an inkling of the somewhat special 

 attitude concerning the phenomenon of life that unavoidably devel- 

 ops in those who for many years have been preoccupied with a study 

 of the microscopically small organisms. Hence I might justifiably have 

 announced my discourse as 'the microbiologist's philosophy of life', if 

 it were not for the fact that this might have entailed the danger of 

 creating on the one hand a misconception, and on the other an an- 

 ticipation that would not be fulfilled. This may be explained in the 

 following manner. 



The word 'microbe' is a neologism; not until 1878 was it introduced 

 into scientific vocabulary by the surgeon Sedillot, who had first sought 

 and obtained the high sanction of the great philologist Littre. In spite 

 of this the term microbiologist, designating the student of the logos of 

 the microtia, is still not infrequently interpreted as indicating a biol- 

 ogist of small stature. So much for the misconception; as for the anti- 

 cipation, the phrase 'philosophy of life' has gradually acquired a re- 

 striction - and at the same time a greater profundity - that causes its 

 meaning to deviate markedly from a simple contemplation of life, 

 considered as the aggregate of the enormously divergent manifesta- 

 tions of life. Consequently I have chosen a less ambitious title, just 

 sufficient to serve as a warning to prospective auditors. What I wish 

 to discuss may perhaps be adequately summarized as 'the microbiol- 

 ogist's concept of life'. 



The first item that contributes greatly to the microbiologist's con- 

 cept of life is the ever vivid recognition of life's ubiquitousness. The 

 fact that various living germs lie dormant on so serene an object as our 

 chairman's gavel, for example, immediately throws a startling light 

 on the potencies of life in the aggregate, and this the more so because it 

 is coupled with the experience that the word 'dormant' must in this 



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