TRIBUTE TO PASTEUR 205 



their recurrence, are not measurable by money values, but by 

 those of healthy life and diminished suffering to men. Medicine, 

 surgery, and hygiene have all been powerfully affected by 

 M. Pasteur's work, which has culminated in his method of 

 treating hydrophobia. I cannot conceive that any competently 

 instructed person can consider M. Pasteur's labours in this 

 direction without arriving at the conclusion that, if any man has 

 earned the praise and honour of his fellows, he has. I find it 

 no less difficult to imagine that our wealthy country should be 

 other than ashamed to continue to allow its citizens to profit by 

 the treatment freely given at the Institute without contributing 

 to its support. Opposition to the proposals which your Lordship 

 sanctions would be equally conceivable if it arose out of nothing 

 but the facts of the case thus presented. But the opposition 

 which, as I see from the English papers, is threatened, has really 

 for the most part nothing to do either with M. Pasteur's merits 

 or with the efficacy of his method of treating hydrophobia. It 

 proceeds partly from the fanatics of la'tssez /aire, who think it 

 better to rot and die than to be kept whole and lively by State 

 interference, partly from the blind opponents of properly con- 

 ducted physiological experimentation, who prefer that men 

 should suffer rather than rabbits or dogs, and partly from those 

 who for other but not less powerful motives hate everything 

 which contributes to prove the value of strictly scientific methods 

 of inquiry in all those questions which affect the welfare of 

 society. I sincerely trust that the good sense of the meeting 

 over which your Lordship will preside will preserve it from 

 being influenced by those unworthy antagonisms, and that the 

 just and benevolent enterprise you have undertaken may have a 

 happy issue. — I am, my Lord Mayor, your obedient servant, 



" Thomas H. Huxley." 



At the Church Congress held in Manchester during 

 the previous October, Dr. Wace, the Principal of King's 

 College, made an attack upon Agnosticism, which was 

 supported by Mr. Frederic Harrison and Mr. Laing, in 

 articles contributed to the Nineteenth Century. This led to 

 a series of four articles by Huxley, the first of which 

 "Agnosticism" appeared in the same periodical for 

 February 1889 (Coll. Essays, v, p. 209). 



