164 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



tributing to the fame and fortune of their country, they might 

 aspire to originating vast benefits to the whole of humanity. 



It was indeed a sad and a sublime spectacle, that of the 

 contrast between that ardent, soaring soul and that patient 

 helpless body. It was probably when thinking of those 

 biographies — some of them too succinct, to his mind, Jenner's 

 for instance — that Pasteur wrote : ' ' From the life of men 

 whose passage is marked by a trace of durable light, let us 

 piously gather up every word, every incident likely to make 

 known the incentives of their great soul, for the education of 

 posterity." He looked upon the cult of great men as a great 

 principle of national education, and believed that children, as 

 soon as they could read, should be made acquainted with the 

 heroic or benevolent souls of great men. In his pious patriotism 

 he saw a secret of strength and of hope for a nation in its 

 reverence for the memories of the great, a sacred and intimate 

 bond between the visible and the invisible worlds. His soul 

 was deeply religious. During his illness — a time when the 

 things of this world assume their real proportions — his mind 

 rose far beyond this earth. The Infinite appeared to him as it 

 did to Pascal, and with the same rapture ; he was less attracted 

 by Pascal, when, proud and disdainful, he exposes man's weak- 

 ness for humiliation's sake, than when he declares that " Man 

 is produced but for Infinity," and "he finds constant instruc- 

 tion in progress." Pasteur believed in material progress as 

 well as in moral improvement ; he invariably marked in the 

 books he was reading — Pascal, Nicole and others — those pas- 

 sages which were both consoling and exalting. 



In one of his favourite books, Of the Knoivledge of God and 

 of Self, he much appreciated the passage where Bossuet ascribes 

 to human nature " the idea of an infinite wisdom, of an abso- 

 lute power, of an infallible rectitude, in one word, the idea 

 of perfection." Another phrase in the same book seemed to 

 him applicable to experimental method as well as to the conduct 

 of life : " The greatest aberration of the mind consists in 

 believing a thing because it is desirable." 



With December, joy began to return to the Ecole Normale : 

 the laboratory was progressing and seemed an embodiment of 

 renewed hopes of further work. M. Godelier's little bulletins 

 now ran : " General condition most satisfactory. Excellent 

 morale ; the progress evidenced daily by the return of action in 

 the paralysed muscles inspires the patient with great confidence. 





