NATURE 



97 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1901. 



PASTEUR. 

 Tlie Life of Pasteur. By Ren^ Vallery-Radot. Trans- 

 lated from the French by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire. 



Pp. 628 ; 2 vols. (Westminster : Archibald Constable 



and Co., Ltd., 1902.) Price 32.^. 

 " T '(TLUVRE de Pasteur est admirable ; elle 



-I — ' montre son genie, mais il faut avoir vecu dans 

 son intimite pour connaitre toute la bonte de son cceur," 

 wrote one of Pasteur's most distinguished disciples who 

 was m daily intercourse with him. 



This sentiment, so simply and so eloquently expressed 

 by Dr. Roux, can now, thanks to M. Vallery-Radot, be 

 shared by that larger circle of Pasteur's friends and ad- 

 mirers who, distributed in all quarters of the globe, knew 

 him in his public capacity, but could not have the 

 privilege of being included amongst his intimate 

 associates. 



There are, however, few men whose scientific writings 

 reflect the inner life of the man to the same extent as do 

 those of Pasteur, for with Pasteur his work was his life — 

 his religion, and it was inseparably bound up with every 

 action, with every aspiration. 



M. Vallery-Radot has enabled us to accompany Pasteur 

 throughout his career, to share alike in his joys and his sor- 

 rows, in his anxieties and triumphs, guiding and directing 

 us the while with consummate skill, so that the true pro- 

 portion of the actions and events which are recorded is 

 maintained in their relation to the whole. As Pasteur's 

 son-in-law, M. Radot has had e.xceptional opportunities 

 for undertaking this biography, and already we are 

 familiar with his workmanship in that vivid sketch of 

 Pasteur published many years ago, in which the authorship 

 is modestly veiled under the title "I'histoire d'un savant 

 par un ignorant." This little volume was brought out in 

 Pasteur's life-time ; since his death we have had M. 

 Duclaux's intellectual appreciation of his master, whom 

 he succeeded as Director of the Pasteur Institute, Dr. 

 Roux's sympathetic personal reminiscences of his great 

 teacher, M. Fleury's impressionist sketch, and in England 

 the volume in the Qentury Science Series, for which the 

 writer of this notice and her husband are responsible. 

 M. Radot's work differs from all of these inasmuch as he 

 has had access to letters and diaries, note-books and 

 divers documents which were to others inaccessible, and 

 by the judicious use of which the personal element is so 

 happily brought into relief and yet blended so har- 

 moniously with its surroundings. 



Of no man could it be more truly said that whatsoever 

 his hand found to do he did it with all his might ; 

 the de minimis non curat did not exist for Pasteur. 

 As Dean of the new Facult(5 des Sciences at Lille, for 

 example, despite his passionate devotion to his researches 

 on crystals and molecular dissymmetry, he would forsake 

 his beloved laboratory to take his students round factories 

 and foundries, even organising a tour in Belgium so that 

 they might visit the industries of the country, "question- 

 ing the foreman with his insatiable curiosity, pleased to 

 induce in his students a desire to learn." 

 NO. 1675, VOL. 65] 



Later, when he returns to the Ecole Normale as adminis- 

 trator and director of scientific studies, in which office was 

 included such miscellaneous duties as the surveillance of 

 the economic and hygienic management, the responsi- 

 bility for general discipline, intercourse with the families 

 of the pupils and the literary or scientific establishments 

 frequented by them, we find him noting down as matters 

 for attention " Catering ; ascertain what weight of meat 

 per pupil is given at the Ecole Polytechnique. Court- 

 yard to be strewn with sand. Ventilation of class room. 

 Dining hall door to be repaired." 



If professors in this country have in the past had but 

 slight encouragement to embark upon research, what 

 would they have said to the position of Pasteur in this 

 respect, who at the Ecole Normale, in addition to such 

 vexatious demands upon his valuable time, had no labora- 

 tory, but a garret only in which to carry on his investi- 

 gations, whilst we hear of him later "building a drying- 

 stove under the staircase ; though he could only reach 

 the stove by crawling on his knees, this being better even 

 than his old attic " ? 



The general state of affairs connected with higher 

 education in France was indeed at that time most de- 

 plorable, and Duruy, the enlightened Minister of Public 

 Instruction, whilst sympathising with the lamentable 

 position occupied by science in the country and deeply 

 regretting the penurious policy which stifled its aspira- 

 tions, was unable to make his voice heard in Cabmet 

 councils, the other ministers, we are told by him, " being 

 absorbed in politics." 



Pasteur and Duruy had often discussed the contrast 

 presented by the flourishing young University of Bonn, 

 with its staff of fifty-three professors and vast laboratories 

 for chemistry, physics and medicine, and the Strassburg 

 faculty, with its handful of teachers, hampered in every 

 direction by a policy of deplorable penury. It is not 

 surprising to find Pasteur, in the anguish of his soul, 

 well-nigh crushed by the disasters which overwhelmed 

 his country, bitterly exclaiming in 1870 : 



" We savants were indeed right when we deplored the 

 poverty of the department of Public Instruction ! The 

 real cause of our misfortune lies there. It is not with 

 impunity — as it will one day be recognised, too late — 

 that a great nation is allowed to lose its intellectual 

 standard. . . . We are paying the penalty of fifty years' 

 forgetfulness of science, of its conditions of development, 

 of its immense influence on the destiny of a great 

 people, and of all that might have assisted the diffusion 

 of light." 



Again he writes in a pamphlet entitled " Why France 

 found no Superior Men in the Hours of Peril" : — 



" France has done nothing to keep up, to propagate 

 and to develop the progress of science in our country. 

 . . . She has lived on her past, thinking herself great 

 by the scientific discoveries to which she owed her 

 material prosperity, but not perceiving that she was im- 

 prudently allowing the sources of those discoveries to 

 become dry . . . Whilst Germany was multiplying her 

 universities, establishing between them the most salutary 

 emulation, bestowing honours and consideration on the 

 masters and doctors, creating vast laboratories amply 

 supplied with the most perfect instruments, France, 

 enervated by revolutions, ever vainly seeking for the 

 best form of Government, was giving but careless atten- 

 tion to her establishments for higher education." 



