22 THE LIFE OF PAfiTTEUB 



contradict me when I said, ' In the present state of science 

 th' Hne of spontaneous generation is a chimera.' And 



I add, with similar independence, ' All the worse for those 

 whose philosophical or political ideas are hindered by my 

 studies.' 



' This is not to be taken to mean that, in my beliefs and in 

 the conduct of my life, I only take account of acquired science : 

 if I would, I could not do so, for I should then have to strip 

 myself of a part of myself. There are two men in each one 

 of us : the scientist, ho who starts with a clear field and 

 desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observa- 

 tion, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of senti- 

 ment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead 

 children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see th 

 again, but who believes that he will, and lives in that hope, 

 the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that 

 the force that is within him cannot die. The two domains are 

 distinct , and woe to him who tries to let them tresspass on each 

 other in the so imperfect state of human knowledge." 



And that separation, as he understood it, caused in him 

 none of those conflicts which often determine a crisis in a 

 human soul. As a scientist, he claimed absolute liberty of 

 i • h ; he consid red, with Claude Bernard and Littre, that 

 it was a mistaken waste of time to endeavour to penetrate 

 primary can- ' we can only note correlations," he said. 



it, with the spiritual sentiment which caused him to claim 

 for the inner moral life the same liberty as for scientific re- 



urch, he could not underst rtain givers i na- 



tions who affirm that matter lias org I il .', and who, 



ering as perfectly simple t he spectacle of the Universe 

 of which Earth is but an infinitesimal part, are in no v 

 moved by the Infinite Power who created the worlds. With 

 1 whole heart he proclaimed the immortality of the soul. 



mode of looking upon human life, in spite of sorrows, 



of struggles, of heaw hardens, had in it ■ Btrong element of 



ood m: 'No effort is wasted/ 1 he said, giving thus a 



wriie lesson of philosophy to those inferior minds who 



only see imm. diate results in the work they undertake and are 



rat disappointment. In his ct for 



tie imenon of Con. e, by which almost all 



men, enveloped as they are in the mystery of the Universe, 

 have the prescience of an Ideal, of a God, he considered that 



