Letters 25 



recognition of M. Pasteur's services, even if there were 

 nothing further to be said about them. 



But there is much more to be said. M. Pasteur's direct 

 and indirect contributions to our knowledge of the causes 

 of diseased states, and of the means of preventing theirs 

 recurrence, are not measurable by money values, but by 

 those of healthy life and diminished suffering to men. 

 Medicine, surgery, and hygiene have all been powerfully 

 affected by M. Pasteur's work, which has culminated 

 in his method of treating hydrophobia. I cannot con- 10 

 ceive that any competently instructed person can consider 

 M. Pasteur's labors in this direction without arriving 

 at the conclusion that, if any man has earned the praise 

 and honor of his fellows, he has. I find it no less difficult 

 to imagine that our wealthy country should be other 15 

 than ashamed to continue to allow its citizens to profit by 

 the treatment freely given at the Institute without con- 

 tributing to its support. Opposition to the proposals 

 which your Lordship sanctions would be equally incon- 

 ceivable if it arose out of nothing but the facts of the 20 

 case thus presented. But the opposition which, as I see 

 from the English papers, is threatened has really for the 

 most part nothing to do either with M. Pasteur's merits 

 or with the efficacy of his method of treating hydrophobia. 

 It proceeds partly from the fanatics of laissez faire, who 25 

 think it better to rot and die than to be kept whole and 

 lively by State interference, partly 'from the blind oppo- 

 nents of properly conducted physiological experimentation, 

 who prefer that men should suffer than rabbits or dogs, 

 and partly from those who for other but not less power- 30 

 ful motives hate everything which contributes to prove 

 the value of strictly scientific methods of inquiry in all 

 those questions which affect the welfare of society. 



I sincerely trust that the good sense of the meeting over 



