196 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



many and Switzerland ; but in no country were they as numer- 

 ous as in France ..." He added these regretful lines : " A 

 victim of her political instability, France has done nothing tc 

 keep up, to propagate and to develop the progress of science 

 in our country ; she has merely obeyed a given impulse ; she has 

 lived on her past, thinking herself great by the scientific dis- 

 coveries to which she owed her material prosperity, but not per- 

 ceiving that she was imprudently allowing the sources of those 

 discoveries to become dry, whilst neighbouring nations, stimu- 

 lated by her past example, were diverting for their own benefit 

 the course of those springs, rendering them fruitful by their 

 works, their efforts and their sacrifices. 



"Whilst Germany was multiplying her universities, estab- 

 lishing between them the most salutary emulation, bestowing 

 honours and consideration on the masters and doctors, creating 

 vast laboratories amply supplied with the most perfect instru- 

 ments, France, enervated by revolutions, ever vainly seeking 

 for the best form of government, was giving but careless atten- 

 tion to her establishments for higher education . .) ; 



"The cultivation of science in its highest expression is 

 perhaps even more necessary to the moral condition than to the 

 material prosperity of a nation. 



" Great discoveries the manifestations of thought in Art, 

 in Science and in Letters, in a word the disinterested exercise 

 of the mind in every direction and the centres of instruction 

 from which it radiates, introduce into the whole of Society that 

 philosophical or scientific spirit, that spirit of discernment, 

 which submits everything to severe reasoning, condemns 

 ignorance and scatters errors and prejudices. They raise the 

 intellectual level and the moral sense, and through them the 

 Divine idea itself is spread abroad and intensified.'* 



At the very time when Pasteur was preoccupied with the 

 desire of directing the public mind towards the principles of 

 truth, justice and sovereign harmony, Sainte Claire Deville, 

 speaking of the Academy, expressed similar ideas, proclaim- 

 ing that France had been vanquished by science and that it was 

 now time to free scientific bodies from the tyranny of red tape. 

 Why should not the Academy become the centre of all measures 

 relating to science, independently of government offices or 

 officials ? 



J. B. Dumas took part in the discussion opened by Sainte 

 Claire Deville, and agreed with his suggestions. He might 



