EMANCIPATION OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 53 



difficult as that of experiment. This book is scarcely 

 known because it is on a level to which few people 

 nowadays attain. The influence it will have on medical 

 science, on its progress, and on its very language, 

 will be enormous. I cannot now prove my assertion, 

 but the reading of this book will leave so strong an 

 impression that I cannot help thinking that a new 

 spirit will at once inspire these splendid researches." 

 This was said by Pasteur in 1866. That is what he 

 thought of the work of his senior and his rival, at the 

 moment when he himself was about to inspire those 

 " splendid researches " with the movement of reform, 

 the importance and the consequences of which have 

 no equivalent in the history of science. By their 

 discoveries and their teaching, by their examples and 

 their principles, Claude Bernard and Pasteur have 

 succeeded in emancipating a portion of the domain of 

 vital facts from the direct intervention of hypothetical 

 agents and first causes. They were compelled, however, 

 to leave to philosophical speculation, to directing 

 forces, to animism, to vitalism, an immense provisory 

 field, the field which corresponds to the functions of 

 generation and of development, to the life of the 

 species and to its variations. Here we find them 

 again in various disguises. 



