210 PASTEUR: THE HISTORY OF A MIND 



VI 



DISCUSSION OF THE IDEAS OF CLAUDE BERNARD 



Assuredly, in the presence of these confused experi- 

 ments, published without the consent of the one who 

 made them, Pasteur might have replied only with 

 that Olympian silence which Bernard would certainly 

 have 'maintained in like circumstances. He preferred 

 rather'jto do what he had always done, to go straight 

 to his adversary at the risk, he said, of encountering 

 M. Berthelotjjbehind the manuscript of Bernard. To 

 the latter he replied first: "Your diastase which makes 

 alcohol? Do not think that that embarrasses me. I 

 shall be happy to salute it, but I should like to see it first. 

 I have searched for it and never found it. In some 

 recent experiments which took place under your eyes, 

 at the Academy, and which met with your approval, 

 I put some cells of the grape, taken from the interior of 

 the fruit, into a sugar solution in contact with pure air 

 and I have found neither diastase nor alcohol there. 

 How is it that you, to whom I have so often spoken of it, 

 have forgotten or been unmindful of these experiments? 



To which the shade of Bernard might have replied: 

 "Reassure yourself, my friend, I am not unmindful nor 

 do I forget anything! But because you have not seen 

 a thing, does not prove that this thing is impossible. 

 In order to demonstrate the existence of this diastase 

 I make other conditions than yours. I take grapes 

 which are beginning to decay, because for me the decay 

 is a maturity, not advanced, as you make me say with- 

 out, in your turn, at all understanding my point of view, 

 but anticipatory, that is to say, premature. A decayed 

 grape is one which is mature before the others, and in 

 which are beginning the phenomena which only mani- 



