1855—1859 81 



believed he had seen, was but "an immediate vegetable 

 principle, which became precipitated during the fermentation 

 of beer, and which, in precipitating, presented forms analogous 

 to the simpler forms of vegetable life, but formation does not 

 constitute life." 



In the view of the German chemist Liebig, chemical 

 decomposition was produced by influence : the ferment was 

 an extremely alterable organic substance which decomposed, 

 and in decomposing set in motion, by the rupture of its own 

 elements, the molecules of the fermentative matter; it was the 

 dead portion of the yeast, that which had lived and was being 

 altered, which acted upon the sugar. These theories were 

 adopted, taught, and to be found in all treatises on chemistry. 



A vacancy at the Academie des Sciences took Pasteur away 

 from his students for a time and obliged him to go to Paris. 

 Biot, Dumas, Balard and Senarmont had insisted upon his 

 presenting himself in the section of mineralogy. He felt 

 himself unfit for the candidature. He was as incapable of 

 election manoeuvres as he was full of his subject when he had to 

 convince an interlocutor or to interest an audience in his works 

 on crystallography. (These works had just procured the 

 bestowal on him of the great Eumford medal, conferred by the 

 London Eoyal Society.) During this detested canvassing 

 campaign he had one happy day : he was present on February 

 5, 1857, at the reception of Biot by the Academie Francaise. 



Biot, who had entered the Academie des Sciences fifty-four 

 years earlier, and was now the oldest member of the Institute, 

 took advantage of his great age to distribute, in the course of 

 his speech, a good deal of wise counsel, much applauded by 

 Pasteur from the ranks of the audience. Biot, with his calm 

 irony, aimed this epigram at men of science who disdained 

 letters : " Their science was not the more apparent through 

 their want of literary culture." He ended by remarks which 

 formed a continuation of his last letter to Pasteur's father. 

 Making an appeal to those whose high ambition is to conse- 

 crate themselves to pure science, he proudly said : "Perhaps 

 your name, your existence will be unknown to the crowd. But 

 you will be known, esteemed, sought after by a small number 

 of eminent men scattered over the face of the earth, your rivals, 

 your peers in the intellectual Senate of minds ; they alone have 

 the right to appreciate you and to assign to you your rank, 



G 



