EPILOGUE 



The life and work of Elie MetclmikofE are so inti- 

 mately bound together that, in a biography, it is im- 

 possible to separate them. That is why the descrip- 

 tion of his work necessarily has been dispersed along 

 the story of his life ; but, just as, in order to judge of a 

 work of art, one has to draw back and contemplate 

 the whole, we must also, after following the evolution 

 and successive stages of E. MetchnikofE's scientific 

 works, take a full view of his work as a whole. 



He was a bom biologist ; everything connected 

 with life interested him. In his childhood, he ob- 

 served plants and animals. At the age of fifteen, he 

 became acquainted with microscopic beings ; they 

 aroused in him such powerful interest towards the 

 primitive forms of life that, from that moment, not 

 only his future path was marked out for him but also 

 his method of starting from the simple to elucidate the 

 complex. He was imbued with Darwin's theory 

 of evolution ; having begun by the study of inferior 

 animals, he began to look for their connections with 

 other groups. 



He endeavoured to establish the continuity and 

 the unity of phenomena in all living beings. Accord- 

 ing to his method of studying first what was simplest, 

 he turned to embryology, for in the egg and the 

 embryo it is possible to follow step by step the trans- 



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