METHOD OF DISCUSSION AND CONTRADICTIONS. 269 



lot (editor of Bernard's pamphlet), and all his col- 

 leagues, to cut off as many bunches as they pleased. 

 ' Only crush them in contact with pure air,' said he, 

 ' and I defy you to produce fermentation.' 



How often was Pasteur obliged to return to facts 

 already proved, not only at the Academy of Sciences, 

 but at the Academy of Medicine, where M. Jules 

 Guerin, at the age of eighty, challenged him to a duel 

 as his scientific ultimatum ! If M. Pasteur at times 

 pleaded his cause with too much passion, it was the 

 passion of truth, the burning desire to convince, which 

 lent such power and defiance to his vibrating voice. 

 He could not endure his work to be attacked not 

 from pride, none was more modest than he but from 

 irritation at the denial of positive facts; facts of 

 which he was a thousand times assured, and which 

 all the world might verify. No one now remembers 

 these discussions. Time has passed, and opposition 

 has been overthrown. It has been granted to Pasteur 

 to see, everywhere around him, the beneficent results 

 of his discoveries. From all parts, from his own as 

 well as from foreign countries, such proofs of admira- 

 tion and gratitude have been showered upon him as are 

 usually granted only to those whose death has atoned 

 for their genius. He has opened up such sources of 

 wealth to industry and agriculture that, as the learned 

 English professor Huxley has truly said, ' Pasteur's 

 discoveries suffice, of themselves, to cover the war 



