224 EVOLUTION 



potent spark of electricity with inventions, 

 each a literal masterpiece of craft subtlety 

 and of manual skill. Kelvin, whom in 

 illustrious old age the world delighted to 

 honour, was thus as truly the master-smith of 

 Glasgow as had been Watt before him; so 

 the spacious physical laboratories of every 

 university in the world to-day are still above 

 all the local extensions of William Thomson's 

 cellar- workshop. 



So Lord Lister is not to be understood 

 primarily even as surgeon-in-chief : his place 

 in history, immortal though it be, is also 

 humble, humbler even than that of the 

 plebeian branch of the profession, the barber's. 

 For he with his antiseptic surgery is " the 

 shepherd with his tarbox by his side "; more 

 simply still, since full shepherd-craft is far 

 beyond his ken, he is the " tar-boy," who 

 waits upon the shepherd, ready to put on his 

 dab of antiseptic wherever needed. So Pas- 

 teur was not essentially a magnate of the 

 Legion of Honour, the member of two Aca- 

 demies at home, and of all abroad; not even 

 primarily the great chemist. He was a 

 tanner's son, born and bred, that is, amid the 

 greatest and oldest of antiseptic processes, and 

 developing and applying it all his life. More 

 generally, in character and experience he was 



