| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| INTRODUCTION, BY PROFESSOR TYNDALL | [xi] |
| RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH—FIRST DISCOVERIES | [1] |
| FERMENTATION | [40] |
| ACETIC FERMENTATION—THE MANUFACTURE OF VINEGAR | [66] |
| THE QUESTION OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION | [89] |
| STUDIES ON WINE | [112] |
| THE SILKWORM-DISEASE | [127] |
| DECISIVE EXPERIMENTS | [164] |
| STUDIES ON BEER | [168] |
| VIRULENT DISEASES—SPLENIC FEVER, SEPTICÆMIA | [176] |
| FOWL CHOLERA | [212] |
| ATTENUATED VIRUS, OR VACCINATION—THE FOWL CHOLERA VACCINE | [220] |
| THE VACCINE OF SPLENIC FEVER | [231] |
| THE RETURN TO VIRULENCE | [246] |
| ETIOLOGY OF SPLENIC FEVER | [250] |
| METHOD OF DISCUSSION AND CONTRADICTIONS | [262] |
| THE LABORATORY OF THE ÉCOLE NORMALE—VARIOUS STUDIES—HYDROPHOBIA | [271] |
INTRODUCTION.
In the early part of the present year the French original of this work was sent to me from Paris by its author. It was accompanied by a letter from M. Pasteur, expressing his desire to have the work translated and published in England. Responding to this desire, I placed the book in the hands of the Messrs. Longman, who, in the exercise of their own judgment, decided on publication. The translation was confided, at my suggestion, to Lady Claud Hamilton.
The translator's task was not always an easy one, but it has, I think, been well executed. A few slight abbreviations, for which I am responsible, have been introduced, but in no case do they affect the sense. It was, moreover, found difficult to render into suitable English the title of the original: 'M. Pasteur, Histoire d'un Savant par un Ignorant.' A less piquant and antithetical English title was, therefore, substituted for the French one.
This filial tribute, for such it is, was written, under the immediate supervision of M. Pasteur, by his devoted and admiring son-in-law, M. Valery Radot. It is the record of a life of extraordinary scientific ardour and success, the picture of a mind on which facts fall like germs upon a nutritive soil, and, like germs so favoured, undergo rapid increase and multiplication. One hardly knows which to admire most—the intuitive vision which discerns in advance the new issues to which existing data point, or the skill in device, the adaptation of means to ends, whereby the intuition is brought to the test and ordeal of experiment.
In the investigation of microscopic organisms—the 'infinitely little,' as Pouchet loved to call them—and their doings in this our world, M. Pasteur has found his true vocation. In this broad field it has been his good fortune to alight upon a crowd of connected problems of the highest public and scientific interest, ripe for solution, and requiring for their successful treatment the precise culture and capacities which he has brought to bear upon them. He may regret his abandonment of molecular physics; he may look fondly back upon the hopes with which his researches on the tartrates and paratartrates inspired him; he may think that great things awaited him had he continued to labour in this line. I do not doubt it. But this does not shake my conviction that he yielded to the natural affinities of his intellect, that he obeyed its truest impulses, and reaped its richest rewards, in pursuing the line that he has chosen, and in which his labours have rendered him one of the most conspicuous scientific figures of this age.
With regard to the earliest labours of M. Pasteur, a few remarks supplementary to those of M. Radot may be introduced here. The days when angels whispered into the hearkening human ear, secrets which had no root in man's previous knowledge or experience, are gone for ever. The only revelation—and surely it deserves the name—now open to the wise arises from 'intending the mind' on acquired knowledge. When, therefore, M. Radot, following M. Pasteur, speaks with such emphasis about 'preconceived ideas,' he does not mean ideas without antecedents. Preconceived ideas, if out of deference to M. Pasteur the term be admitted, are the vintage of garnered facts. We in England should rather call them inductions, which, as M. Pasteur truly says, inspire the mind, and shape its course, in the subsequent work of deduction and verification.