IDEAS OF CLAUDE BERNARD ON FERMENTATION 209 



should it not secrete another diastase capable of trans- 

 forming sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid? 1 



Such was, at least as far as we can see, the cycle of 

 ideas which Bernard made a beginning of submitting 

 to experimental verification at his country house at 

 Saint-Julien, at the time of the vintages of 1877, some 

 months before his death. Without saying anything 

 about it to any one, he had written down, a little care- 

 lessly, his first results and his new projects for experi- 

 ments in the loose leaves of a manuscript which was 

 found after his death, and which his friends believed 

 worthy of publication. It is always necessary to dis- 

 trust one's friends, especially when one is no longer there 

 to watch them. Posthumous writings have never aug- 

 mented the glory of any one, and the publication of these 

 few pages of notes, which Bernard had very wisely con- 

 cealed at the bottom of a drawer, had not, in my opinion, 

 any pretext or excuse. The kind of general ideas in the 

 light of which they had been conceived and written was 

 sufficiently well-known by the recent publication of the 

 work Sur les ph6nomenes de la vie communs aux animaux 

 et aux veg&aux, the proof of which Bernard had carefully 

 corrected at Saint-Julien in 1877. If the ideas of the 

 master had undergone a little change since then, it is 

 not to be observed in the sybilline phrases of the manu- 

 script. In running through them to-day, it seems evi- 

 dent that Bernard could not have considered his work 

 as anything more than a blow given with a mattock 

 in order to test the soil before beginning his labors. 



1 We now know that it does do this, but that this enzyme (called Zy- 

 mase) can be obtained for study only by crushing the yeast under high 

 pressure. Trs. 



14 



