1885—1888 219 



Duruy and Jules Simon ; it was a great day for these former 

 Ministers of Public Instruction. Like them, Pasteur had all 

 his life been deeply interested in higher education. " If that 

 teaching is but for a small number," he said, "it is with this 

 small number, this elite that the prosperity, glory and 

 supremacy of a nation rest." 



Joseph Bertrand, chairman of the Institute Committee, know- 

 ing that by so doing he responded to Pasteur's dearest wishes, 

 spoke of the past and recalled the memories of Biot, Senarmont, 

 Claude Bernard, Balard, and J. B. Dumas. 



Professor Grancher, Secretary of the Committee, alluded to 

 the way in which not only Vulpian but Brouardel, Charcot, 

 Verneuil, Chauveau and Villemin had recently honoured them- 

 selves by supporting the cause of progress and preparing its 

 triumph. These memories of early friends, associated with that 

 of recent champions, brought before the audience a vision of 

 the procession of years. After speaking of the obstacles Pasteur 

 had so often encountered amongst the medical world — 



"You know," said M. Grancher, "that M. Pasteur is an 

 innovator, and that his creative imagination, kept in check by 

 rigorous observation of facts, has overturned many errors and 

 built up in their place an entirely new science. His discoveries 

 on ferments, on the generation of the infinitesimally small, on 

 microbes, the cause of contagious diseases, and on the vaccina- 

 tion of those diseases, have been for biological chemistry, for 

 the veterinary art and for medicine, not a regular progress, but 

 a complete revolution. Now, revolutions, even those imposed 

 by scientific demonstration, ever leave behind them vanquished 

 ones who do not easily forgive. M. Pasteur has therefore many 

 adversaries in the world, without counting those Athenian 

 French who do not like to see one man always right or always 

 fortunate. And, as if he had not enough adversaries, M. 

 Pasteur makes himself new ones by the rigorous implacability 

 of his dialectics and the absolute form he sometimes gives to his 

 thought." 



Going on to the most recently acquired results, M. Grancher 

 stated that the mortality amongst persons treated after bites 

 from rabid dogs remained under 1 per 100. 



'If those figures are indeed eloquent," said M. Christophle, 

 the treasurer, who spoke after M. Grancher, "other figures 

 are touching. I would advise those who only see the dark side 

 of humanity," he remarked, before entering upon the statement 



