FOREWORD xix 



glimpses we get of the great teachers with whom he came 

 in contact. What a model of a scientific man is shown in the 

 character of Biot, so keenly alive to the interests of his young 

 friend, whose brilliant career he followed with the devotion of 

 a second father. One of the most touching incidents recorded 

 in the book relates to Pasteur's election to the Academy of 

 Sciences : — "The next morning when the gates of the Mont- 

 parnasse cemetery were opened, a woman walked towards 

 Biot's grave with her hands full of flowers. It was Mme. 

 Pasteur who was bringing them to him . . . who had loved 

 Pasteur with so deep an affection." Pasteur looked upon the 

 cult of great men as a great principle in national education. 

 As he said to the students of the University of Edinburgh : — 

 "Worship great men " ;* and this reverence for the illustrious 

 dead was a dominant element in his character, though the 

 doctrines of Positivism seemed never to have had any attraction 

 for him. A dark shadow in the scientific life is often thrown 

 by a spirit of jealousy, and the habit of suspicious, carping 

 criticism. The hall-mark of a small mind, this spirit should 

 never be allowed to influence our judgment of a man's work, 

 and to young men a splendid example is here offered of a man 

 devoted to his friends, just and generous to his rivals, and 

 patient under many trying contradictions and vexatious 

 oppositions. 



And the last great lesson is humility before the unsolved 

 problems of the Universe. Any convictions that might be a 

 comfort in the sufferings of human life had his respectful 

 sympathy. His own creed was beautifully expressed in his 

 eulogy upon Littre : — "He who proclaims the existence of the 

 Infinite, and none can avoid it — accumulates in that affirma- 

 tion more of the supernatural than is to be found in all the 

 miracles of all the religions ; for the notion of the Infinite 

 presents that double character that it forces itself upon us and 

 yet is incomprehensible. When this notion seizes upon our 

 understanding, we can but kneel. ... I see everywhere the 

 inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world ; through it, 



* A great nation, said Disraeli, is a nation which produces great men. 



