222 THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



the army. Every student of the Ecole Normale en- 

 listed. Pasteur's laboratory was used to house sol- 

 diers. He himself wished to be enrolled in the Na- 

 tional Guard, and had to be told that a half -paralyzed 

 man could not render military service. He was ob- 

 sessed with horror of wanton bloodshed and with 

 indignation at the insolence of armed injustice. 

 Trained to serve his country only in one way he 

 tried, but in vain, to resume his researches. He re- 

 tired to the old home town of Arbois, and sought to 

 distract his mind from the contemplation of human 

 baseness. Arbois was entered by the enemy in Janu- 

 ary with the usual atrocities of war. Pasteur accom- 

 panied by wife and daughter had gone in search of his 

 son, sick at Pontarlier. The boy was restored to health 

 and returned to his regiment the following month. 



During this crisis Pasteur and his friends felt, as 

 many English scientists feel in 1917, in reference 

 to ignorance in high places. "We are paying the 

 penalty," he said, " of fifty years' forgetf ulness of 

 science, and of its conditions of development." Again 

 he speaks, as Englishmen to-day very well might, of 

 the neglect, disdain even, of the country for great 

 intellectual men, especially in the realm of exact sci- 

 ence. In the same strain his friend Bertin said that 

 after the war everything would have to be rebuilt 

 from the top to the bottom, the top especially. Pas- 

 teur recalled the period of 1792 when Lavoisier, 

 Berthollet, Monge, Fourcroy, Guyton de Morveau, 

 Chaptal, Clouet, and other scientists had furnished 

 France with gunpowder, steel, cannon, fortifications, 

 balloons, leather, and other means to repel unjust 

 invasion. 



