LABORATORIES AND PROBLEMS 



his newly discovered treatment for the prevention of 

 rabies that the subscription was undertaken which led 

 finally to the erection of the buildings before us and 

 brought the Pasteur Institute in its present form into 

 being. Of the other aims and objects of the institution 

 I shall speak more at length in a moment. 



I have just said that the building before us is in 

 effect the monument of the great savant. This is true 

 in a somewhat more literal sense than might be sup- 

 posed, for the body of Pasteur rests in a crypt at its 

 base. The personal labors of the great discoverer were 

 practically ended at the time when the institute was 

 opened in 1888, on which occasion, as will be remem- 

 bered, the scientific representatives of all nations gath- 

 ered in Paris to do honor to the greatest Frenchman of 

 his generation. He was spared to the world, however, 

 for seven years more, during which time he fully or- 

 ganized the work of the institution along the lines it 

 has since followed, and was, of course, the animating 

 spirit of all the labors undertaken there by his devoted 

 students and assistants. He is the animating spirit 

 of the institution still, and it is fitting that his body 

 should rest in the worthy mausoleum within the walls 

 of that building whose erection was the tangible cul- 

 mination of his life labors. The sarcophagus is a 

 shrine within this temple of science which will serve 

 to stimulate generations of workers here to walk 

 worthily in the footsteps of the great founder of the 

 institution. For he must be an unimaginative per- 

 son indeed who, passing beneath that arch bearing the 

 simple inscription " Ici Repose Pasteur," could descend 

 into the simple but impressive mausoleum and stand 



181 



