INDIAN NATIONAL LIFE 87 



affected the whole of Europe, a disease which rendered the 

 silkworm useless for the manufacture of the silk. In one district 

 of France alone over eight million pounds had been lost in 

 fifteen years owing to the ravages of this disease. Pasteur 

 was called in, and although he knew nothing of the industry 

 or the silkworm, and was never engaged in any silk business, 

 yet by the application of his methods he got to the bottom 

 of the trouble and gave a prescription for the remedy. The 

 particular achievement with which Pasteur's name is most 

 associated was the last and in many respects the greatest of 

 his life, that in respect to the treatment of hydrophobia. 

 You happily possess two Pasteur Institutes where anti-rabic 

 treatment can be given and people can be spared from the 

 awful consequences that are too likely to ensue from the bite 

 of a mad dog. I have no time to tell you the stages by 

 which Pasteur achieved this great discovery but I think you 

 will gather from this brief indication of Pasteur's work that 

 you cannot find a better example of the cultivation of science 

 for the welfare of a nation. 



You may say that this is a material view of science. It 

 is no doubt in a sense a material view. But it is a view of 

 science that surely no benevolent person would in any way 

 ignore or belittle. Health, after all, is the first consideration. 

 If you have not got health you cannot have a nation at all, 

 and the direction of science to the subject of public health 

 seems to me to be one of the first calls to which a scientific 

 man should respond. It is possible also to be too censorious 

 about the utilitarian application of science in relation to the 

 practical arts. We are often told truly enough that man 

 cannot live by bread alone. At the same time man must 

 have bread among other things. And a man who, like 

 Pasteur, could rescue a people from industrial destruction is 

 surely rendering a magnificent service to the nation to which 

 he belongs. 



