Louis Pasteur is the most striking figure in nineteenth century science. In biology, in chemistry, in physics, in medicine and surgery, and in the important practical subjects of fermentation, spontaneous generation and sanitation, he has left landmarks that represent great advances in science and starting-points for new explorations into the as yet unmapped domain of scientific knowledge. His was a typically scientific mind. His intuitions were marvellous in their prophetic accuracy, yet were surpassed by his wonderful faculty for evolving methods of experimental demonstrations of his theories. His work has changed the whole aspect of biology and medicine, and especially the precious branches of it that refer to the cure and treatment of disease.
To such a man our generation owes a fitting monument. It has been given him. He was modest in life with the sincere modesty of the true man of science, who knows in the midst of great discoveries that he is only on the edge of truth, who realizes that "abyss calls to abyss" in the world of knowledge that lies beyond his grasp. Pasteur's monument, very appropriately for a man of his practical bent, is no idle ornamental memorial. It is a great institution for the perpetual prosecution of his favorite studies and for the care of patients suffering from the diseases to whose investigation the best part of his life was devoted.
In this Institut Pasteur repose his ashes. They find a suitable resting-place in a beautiful chapel. Situate just below the main entrance a little lower than the ground floor, [{294}] of the institute proper, this chapel seems to form the main part of the foundation of the building. It is symbolic of the life of the man in whose honor it was erected. He who said, "The more I know the more nearly does my faith approach that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know it all my faith would doubtless equal even that of the Breton peasant woman." On a firm foundation of imperturbable faith this greatest scientific genius of the century raised up an edifice of acquisitions to science such as it had never before been given to man to make.
Above the entrance of this chapel-tomb, and immediately beneath the words "Here lies Pasteur," is very fittingly placed his famous confession of faith:
"Happy the man who bears within him a divinity, an ideal of beauty and obeys it; an ideal of art, an ideal of science, an ideal of country, an ideal of the virtues of the Gospel." [Footnote 12]
[Footnote 12: Heureux celui qui porte en soi un dieu, un idéal de beauté et qui lui obéit; idéal de l'art, idéal de la science, idéal de la patrie, idéal des vertus de l'Evangile.]
When we turn to the panegyric of Littré in which the words occur we find two further sentences worth noting here: "These are the living springs of great thoughts and great actions. Everything grows clear in the reflections from the infinite." [Footnote 13]
[Footnote 13: Ce sont les sources vives des grandes pensées et des grandes actions. Toutes s'éclairent des reflets de l'infini.]
These words are all the more striking from the circumstances in which they were uttered. When a vacant chair (fauteuil) in the French academy is filled by the election of a new member of the Forty Immortals, the incoming academician must give the panegyric of his predecessor in the same chair. Pasteur was elected to the fauteuil that had been occupied by Littré. Littré, who by forty years of unceasing toil made a greater dictionary of the French language than [{295}] the Academy has made in the nearly two hundred years devoted to the task, was the greatest living positivist of his day. He and Pasteur had been on terms of the greatest intimacy. Pasteur's appreciation of his dead friend is at once sincere and hearty, but also just and impartial. Littré had been a model of the human virtues. Suffering had touched him deeply and found him ever ready with compassionate response. His fellow-man had been the subject of his deepest thoughts, though his relationship to other men appealed to him only because of the bonds of human brotherhood. Pasteur called him a "laic" saint. For many of us it is a source of genuine consolation and seems a compensation for the human virtues exercised during a long life that the great positivist died the happy death of a Christian confident in the future life and its rewards.
But Pasteur himself rises above the merely positive. The spiritual side of things appeals to him and other-worldliness steps in to strengthen the merely human motives that meant so much for Littré. Higher motives dominate the life and actions of Pasteur himself. In the midst of his panegyric of the great positivist the greatest scientist of his age makes his confession of faith in the things that are above and beyond the domain of the senses--his ideals and his God.