vi LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFP 



Kussia and took an unpaid post in Paris in order to 

 have a place to work in. He had many devoted 

 friends in whose company he sought refreshment and 

 relaxation, but all his immense energy and industry 

 were concentrated on the development and establish- 

 ment of his great biological theory of " Phagocytosis " 

 and its outcome, the philosophy of life called by him 

 " Orthobiosis." This volume tells truly of a simple 

 Ufe — a life in which the social incidents which fill so 

 large a space in most lives were either non-existent 

 or unnoticed because, by the side of the great purpose 

 which dominated Metchmkofi's every thought and 

 action — ^namely, the advancement of Science — ^he was 

 not touched by them. He was affectionate, kind- 

 hearted, and truly considerate of others, but was, in 

 a way which is traceable to his racial origin, a practical 

 idealist concentrating his whole strength and reason 

 on the realisation of what he held to be the highest 

 good. 



I had as an eager reader of memoirs on bio- 

 logical subjects become acquainted with Metchnikoff's 

 earliest publications in 1865, when he was twenty 

 years of age and I two years younger. I wrote short 

 accounts of them, as they appeared, for a chronicle 

 of progress in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical 

 Science, then edited by my father. Those on a 

 European Land Planarian, on the development of 

 Myzostomum (the parasite of the Feather-Star), on 

 Apsilus, a strange new kind of wheel-animalcule, and 

 his protest against Rudolf Leuckart's treatment of 

 him in the matter of his important discoveries con- 



