106 



PASTEUK: THE HISTORY OF A MIND 



history and entered a laboratory. We are nonplussed 

 before some of his pieces of apparatus. Thus, for ex- 

 ample, he did not hesitate an instant to send a current 

 of water vapor through a drying tube containing pumice 

 stone saturated with sulphuric acid. But aside from 

 these defects as a scientific man, he had, as vulgariser 

 and polemic, some remarkable qualities a wide knowl- 

 edge, a boldness of affirmation which betokened a sin- 

 cere conviction, and a ready pen which wrote without 

 growing w r eary. 



In comparison with Pouchet, Joly, professor of zoology 

 of the Faculty of Sciences of Toulouse, and Musset, 

 head of an institution in the same city, were some- 

 what lost to sight. Lesser metaphysicians than Pouchet, 

 they seemed quite as incapable of knowing what con- 

 stituted a well-performed experiment. It was Joly, 

 for example, who, in order to prove that there was 

 nothing living in the scum of dust on the surface of the 

 mercury, introduced what he gathered into water (into 

 distilled water, he said gravely) and was astonished 

 to see nothing appear hi the mixture, even when the 

 eye was "armed with the best microscope." 1 How 

 answer such experiments? 



In the laboratory, we had great sport over these 

 details, but the master could not laugh. He would have 

 been wise to repeat philosophically: "We have not the 

 same sort of brain," but he was indignant to see the 

 truth unrecognized, and contested by such arguments, 

 and to encounter, even in the Academy of Sciences, 

 confreres who hesitated between him and his adversaries. 

 He forgot that science is not univocal, and that one 

 may have a very good mind and still comprehend 

 nothing of a mathematical demonstration, or of the 



1 Examen critique du m6moire de M. Pasteur (Acad. des sciences de 

 Toulouse, 13 mai, 1863). 



