NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



The scene was imposing. It was a national fete 

 to a chemist. It was the French Republic cele- 

 brating the half-centenary of her most eminent liv- 

 ing man of science. Once before, when the nation 

 paid its debt to Pasteur, had the like been seen in 

 France ; not many times in any country or any age. 



Fifty years before, M. Berthelot had gained a 

 modest place as preparateur at the College de 

 France, long one of the strongholds of French 

 science. Foregathering with his books in a high 

 garret, he became aware of the existence, next 

 door, of a reflective, serious - minded young man, 

 just fled from the priestly seminary of St. Sul- 

 pice. The friendship they formed, following their 

 strangely parallel lives, ended five or six years ago 

 with the death of M. Renan. 



The unfrocked young seminarist held closely still 

 to his vocation ; the study of religions remained his 

 life-work. M. Berthelot chose the mysteries of 

 matter. For a time philosophy allured ; but some- 

 thing of a prescience of his genius for experiment 

 must have stirred, and in the laboratory his career 

 began. 



In the years that have gone, the face of the world, 

 and our ideas about it, have changed much. Then 

 the " vital forces" were as much of a reality as the 

 spirits which, for Kepler, pushed the planets round 

 in their course. Rather abashed by the mathc- 



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