114 PASTEUR: THE HISTORY OF A MIND 



The only discussion which produced fruit in the field 

 in which it arose was that raised by Dr. Bastian. Like 

 Fre*my, Bastian had taken up the question a little 

 thoughtlessly, without being very familiar with it, and 

 without any idea of its difficulties. His first experiments 

 were not of any great value; but he had tenacity, fertility 

 of mind, the love of the experimental method, if not an 

 understanding of it, and he has given us ideas, or rather 

 let us say he forced Pasteur to gain ideas, the absence 

 of which had hindered the progress of science. All 

 our present technique has arisen from the objections 

 made by Bastian to the work of Pasteur on spontaneous 

 generations. It was Bastian who made us see that this 

 work which had been so vaunted, abounded in false 

 interpretations, which, he said, invalidated its con- 

 clusions. It was Pasteur and his pupils, Joubert and 

 Chamberland, who showed that even if the interpreta- 

 tion had sometimes been inexact the conclusions were 

 none the less well founded. 



Bastian's first attack was a blow straight from the 

 shoulder. "You maintain," he said, "that urine boiled 

 and preserved in the presence of superheated air, remains 

 clear and sterile because you have allowed no germ 

 to penetrate there. I say, on the contrary, that the 

 germs have nothing to do with it, and that the sterility 

 of the liquid is due only to the fact that, in spite of 

 all your care and your dexterity, you have not known 

 how to reunite in it the physical and chemical conditions 

 necessary for spontaneous generation. The proof of it 

 is this: if I saturate this urine with a little potash boiled 

 and freed from germs, so as to render the urine neutral, 



