INTRODUCTION 



star. "He was a priest; priest of the idea," said his 

 successor. In him, instinct or rather bold intuition, 

 dominated reason. ' ' Therefore, ' ' says Duclaux, ' ' he saw 

 with a new vision and justly." His disdain for tradi- 

 tional knowledge and philosophical speculations was 

 scarcely concealed. Trusting only in experiments, he 

 knew how to outstrip them and more than once went far 

 beyond them. "That which puts him outside of com- 

 parison is the fact that he loved great horizons, knew 

 how to discover them and to make himself a part of 

 them; that he saw at a distance and through the mists, 

 more clearly than anyone else, the high summit he must 

 attain to dominate the unknown and promised land. 

 This was his rare gift and the secret of his power. But 

 once seen he had wings to reach it, no more than we. 

 One might believe, considering the originality, the sim- 

 plicity and the unexpected in his solutions, that they were 

 spontaneous and in the nature of happy discoveries. I 

 do not know whether there ever are any such easy dis- 

 coveries, accomplished without effort and by a sort of 

 divination. Such surely was not the case with Pasteur's. 

 If he was a discoverer it was first of all because he was a 

 silent man and an obstinate one." 1 



Duclaux's spirit was patient and methodical but much 

 less concentrated than Pasteur's. He discovered rela- 

 tively little, but he excelled in understanding, observing 

 and comparing. Without pride, he loved obscure labor 

 the only means that permits a great soul, unknown of 

 the multitude, to enjoy liberty and to enter into the de- 

 lights of meditation. There was something of Mon- 

 taigne in the vast and varied intelligence of Duclaux. 

 It made no difference to him whether a doctrine or a 

 theory was true, if it incited to labor and led to the 

 discovery of new facts. He made use of criticism and 



1 Duclaux. Discours aux Studiants de Paris. 18 juin. 1896. 



