LOUIS PASTEUR, HIS LIFE AND LABOURS. 175 



favoured, undergo rapid increase and multiplication. 

 One hardly knows which to admire most the intuitive 

 vision which discerns in advance the new issues to 

 which existing data point, or the skill in device, the 

 adaptation of means to ends, whereby the intuition ia 

 brought to the test and ordeal of experiment. 



In the investigation of microscopic organisms the 

 * infinitely little,' as Pouchet loved to call them and 

 their doings in this our world, M. Pasteur has found 

 his true vocation. In this broad field it has been his 

 good fortune to alight upon a crowd of connected 

 problems of the highest public and scientific interest, 

 ripe for solution, and requiring for their successful 

 treatment the precise culture and capacities which he 

 has brought to bear upon them. He may regret his 

 abandonment of molecular physics ; he may look fondly 

 back upon the hopes with which his researches on the 

 taitrates and paratartrates inspired him ; he may think 

 that great things awaited him had he continued to 

 labour in this line. I do not doubt it. But this does 

 not shake my conviction that he yielded to the natural 

 affinities of his intellect, that he obeyed its truest 

 impulses, and reaped its richest rewards, in pursuing 

 the line that he has chosen, and in which his labours 

 have rendered him one of the most conspicuous 

 scientific figures of this age. 



With regard to the earliest labours of M. Pasteur, 

 a few remarks supplementary to those of M. Kadot 

 may be introduced here. The days when angels 

 whispered into the hearkening human ear secrets 

 which had no root in man's previous knowledge or 

 experience are gone for ever. The only revelation 

 and surely it deserves the name now open to the wise 

 arises from ' intending the mind ' on acquired know- 

 ledge. When, therefore, M. Radot, following M. Pas- 



