DISCUSSION WITH FR^MY 111 



have found that he had been deceived in some particu- 

 lars, but he was not a man to sulk before the truth, 

 and some ideas which did not enter into science until 

 ten years later, would have found then* place there 

 at once to the great advantage of all. We were, in 

 reality, obliged to wait until the contest with Dr. Bastian 

 in 1876 to rediscover them. But the episode is not less 

 curious, when we consider that the passing error of 

 Pasteur had also its good side and its advantages. This 

 is a good illustration of what a series of judgments, 

 revised without ceasing, goes to make up the incon- 

 testible progress of science. We must believe in this 

 progress but we must never accord more than a limited 

 amount of confidence to the forms in which it is suc- 

 cessively vested. One sometimes reaches the truth by 

 error, and sometimes error by the truth. 



VIII 

 DISCUSSION WITH FR&MY 



Like the preceding, the discussion which opened im- 

 mediately between Pasteur and Fre"my has no interest, 

 even when studied in the light of to-day. I venture to 

 say that it never had any, even when it caused heated 

 discussions in the stances of the Academy of Sciences, 

 it was so incoherent in its diverse phases. When Fre"my 

 undertook these studies, he had arrived at an age when 

 the mind does not adapt itself easily to new habits. 

 He had never been good at unravelling problems, and 

 this one demanded much ingenuity and penetration. 

 He had never been familiar with the microscope, nor with 

 the world of infinitely small organisms. One asks then 

 what he thought to accomplish and why he embarked 



