104 PASTEUR: THE HISTORY OF A MIND 



attention so forcibly. Time was needed to recover from 

 this dazzling fact and to observe more accurately. We 

 shall see Pasteur himself working to harmonize things, 

 and to make that fit into his last theory of the air which 

 his work on spontaneous generation had put into the 

 first. Simultaneously, surgical science developed. After 

 Lister and Jules Guerin, who were preoccupied especially 

 with avoiding atmospheric contagion, came the present 

 day surgery which, neglecting the air, directs its attention 

 and precautions especially to liquids and solids, persons 

 and things, and thus it is that little by little we come 

 into possession of the truth. This work on spontaneous 

 generations has opened horizons whose profundity we 

 do not yet know. 



VII 

 DISCUSSION WITH POUCHET 



We must not suppose that this demonstration, as ex- 

 act as it was, produced universal conviction immediately. 

 It became, on the contrary, the occasion, or rather the 

 pretext, for polemics which did not confine themselves 

 wholly to the scientific field, and from which neither 

 religion nor politics were excluded. The doctrine of 

 Pasteur contradicted certain philosophical doctrines; it 

 spoke to the same purpose as the Bible. In politics, or 

 rather the politics of the time, this was a conservative 

 doctrine; no one has ever been able to understand why. 

 Nothing further was needed to stir up against it certain 

 men and certain journals. On the other hand, scientific 

 men, even the greatest of them, do not always have un- 

 biased minds, or minds fitted to comprehend everything. 

 In short, there was a raising of bucklers, of which the 

 men of my generation have not lost the recollection. 



