154 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



consulting not only Pasteur, but also Milne-Edwards, Claude 

 Bernard, and Henri Sainte Claire Deville, asked the four 

 scientists to his study to meet Eouher, Marshal Vaillant and 

 Duruy, perhaps the three men of the Empire who were best 

 qualified to hear them. The Emperor in his slow, detached 

 manner, invited each of his guests to express his opinion on 

 the course to follow. All agreed in regretting that pure 

 science should be given up. When Eouher said that it was 

 not to be wondered at that the reign of applied science should 

 follow that of pure science, " But if the sources of applications 

 are dried up!" interposed the Emperor hastily. Pasteur, 

 asked to express his opinion (he had brought with him notes 

 of what he wished to say), recalled the fact that the Natural 

 History Museum and the Ecole Polytechnique, which had had 

 so great a share in the scientific movement of the early part of 

 the century, were no longer in that heroic period. For the last 

 twenty years the industrial prosperity of France had induced 

 the cleverest Polytechnicians to desert higher studies and 

 theoretical science, though the source of all applications was to 

 be found in theory. The Ecole Polytechnique was obliged now 

 to recruit its teaching staff outside, chiefly among Normaliens. 

 What was to be done to train future scientists? This : to 

 maintain in Paris, during two or three years, five or six 

 graduates chosen from the best students of the large schools as 

 curators or preparation masters, doing at the Ecole Polytech- 

 nique and other establishments what was done at the Ecole 

 Normale. Thanks to that special institution, science and 

 higher teaching would have a reserve of men who would be- 

 come an honour to their country. Next, and this was the 

 second point, no less important than the first, scientists should 

 be given resources better appropriated to the pursuit of their 

 work ; as in Germany, for instance, where a scientist would 

 leave one university for another on the express condition that 

 a laboratory should be built for him, "a laboratory," said 

 Pasteur, " usually magnificent, not in its architecture (though 

 sometimes that is the case, a proof of the national pride in 

 scientific glory), but in the number and perfection of its 

 appliances. Besides," he added, " foreign scientists have their 

 private homes adjoining their laboratories and collections," 

 indeed a most pressing inducement to work. 



Pasteur did not suggest that a scientist should give up teach- 

 ing ; he recognized, on the contrary, that public teaching forcea 



