30 PASTEUR AND AFTER PASTEUR 



tion known to-day in which you can affirm tha 

 microscopic beings come into the world without 

 germs, without parents like themselves. They 

 who allege it have been the sport of illusions, of 

 ill-made experiments, vitiated by errors which they 

 have not been able to perceive, and have not known 

 how to avoid." He described himself, in a passage 

 of singular beauty, watching his flasks, imploring 

 them to give him a sign of life, and they would not 

 " for I have kept from them, and am still 

 keeping from them, that one thing which is above 

 the power of man to make ; I have kept from them 

 the germs which float in the air, I have kept from 

 them life." And he proclaimed "the germ- 

 theory" proclaimed it, surely, in the shortest 

 words to be had La vie c'est le germe et le germe 

 c'est la vie. 



But the germ-theory began to be born not in 

 1864 but in 1857, of his work on the lactic-acid 

 fermentation : and that work is inseparable from 

 the rest of his work at Lille. Never is he at work 

 on brewing and wine-making alone, for their own 

 sake : always, his mind is set toward the whole 

 kingdom of life in the air. He improves the ways 

 of vinegar-factories and wine-factories, he enriches 

 France, and other countries, year in year out : 

 but the vision before his eyes, the whole time, is 

 of nothing less than a true understanding of all 



