FERMENTATION. 41 



he could make himself directly useful to his hearers he 

 would thereby excite general sympathy with, and direct 

 attention to the new Faculte. The young man congra- 

 tulated himself on this idea, and the man of science 

 rejoiced in it still more. He was filled by the reflec- 

 tions suggested to him by the strangeness of the 

 phenomena which he had just encountered in regard 

 to the molecular dissymmetry of the two tartaric acids, 

 in connection with the life of a microscopic organism. 

 He saw new light thrown upon the obscure problem 

 of fermentation. The part so active performed by 

 an infinitely small organism could not, he thought, 

 be an isolated fact. Behind this phenomenon must 

 lie some great general law. 



I. 



All that has lived must die, and all that is dead 

 must be disintegrated, dissolved or gasified ; the ele- 

 ments which are the substratum of life must enter 

 into new cycles of life. If things were otherwise, the 

 matter of organised beings would encumber the surface 

 of the earth, and the law of the perpetuity of life would 

 be compromised by the gradual exhaustion of its 

 materials. One grand phenomenon presides over this 

 vast work, the phenomenon of fermentation. But 

 this is only a word, and it suggests to the mind simply 

 the internal movements which all organised matter 

 manifests spontaneously after death, without the in- 



