The life of Pasteur

by René Vallery-Radot

One member of the Académie, Alexandre Dumas, refused to let Pasteur call on him. “I will not allow him to come and see me,” he said; “I will myself go and thank him for consenting to become one of us.” He agreed with M. Grandeau, who wrote to Pasteur that “when Claude Bernard and Pasteur consent to enter the ranks of a Society, all the honour is for the latter.”

When Pasteur was elected, his youthfulness of sentiment was made apparent; it seemed to him an immense honour to be one of the Forty. He therefore prepared his reception speech with the greatest care, without however allowing his scientific work to suffer. The life of his predecessor interested him more and more; to work in the midst of family intimacy had evidently been Littré’s ideal of happiness.

Few people, beyond Littré’s colleagues, know that his wife and daughter collaborated in his great work; they looked out the quotations necessary to that Dictionary, of which, if laid end to end, the columns would reach a length of thirty-seven kilometres. The Dictionary, commenced in 1857, when Littré was almost sixty years old, was only interrupted twice: in 1861, when Auguste Comte’s widow asked Littré for a biography of the founder of positive philosophy; and in 1870, when the life of France was compromised and arrested during long months.

Littré, poor and disinterested as he was, had been able to realize his only dream, which was to possess a house in the country. Pasteur, bringing to bear in this, as in all things, his habits of scrupulous accuracy, left his laboratory for one day, and visited that villa, situated near Maisons-Laffitte.

The gardener who opened the door to him might have been the owner of that humble dwelling; the house was in a bad state of repair, but the small garden gave a look of comfort to the little property. It had been the only luxury of the philosopher, who enjoyed cultivating vegetables while quoting Virgil, Horace or La Fontaine, and listened to the nightingale when early dawn found him still sitting at his work.

After visiting this house and garden, reflecting as they did the life of a sage, Pasteur said sadly, “Is it possible that such a man should have been so misjudged!”

A crucifix, hanging in the room where Littré’s family were wont to work, testified to his respect for the beliefs of his wife and daughter. “I know too well,” he said one day, “what are the sufferings and difficulties of human life, to wish to take from any one convictions which may comfort them.”

Pasteur also studied the Positivist doctrine of which Auguste Comte had been the pontiff and Littré the prophet. This scientific conception of the world affirms nothing, denies nothing, beyond what is visible and easily demonstrated. It suggests altruism, a “subordination of personality to sociability,” it inspires patriotism and the love of humanity. Pasteur, in his scrupulously positive and accurate work, his constant thought for others, his self-sacrificing devotion to humanity, might have been supposed to be an adept of this doctrine. But he found it lacking in one great point. “Positivism,” he said, “does not take into account the most important of positive notions, that of the Infinite.” He wondered that Positivism should confine the mind within limits; with an impulse of deep feeling, Pasteur, the scientist, the slow and precise observer, wrote the following passage in his speech: “What is beyond? the human mind, actuated by an invincible force, will never cease to ask itself: What is beyond?... It is of no use to answer: Beyond is limitless space, limitless time or limitless grandeur; no one understands those words. He who proclaims the existence of the Infinite—and none can avoid it—accumulates in that affirmation more of the supernatural than is to be found in all the miracles of all the religions; for the notion of the Infinite presents that double character that it forces itself upon us and yet is incomprehensible. When this notion seizes upon our understanding, we can but kneel.... I see everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world; through it, the supernatural is at the bottom of every heart. The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of the Infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah, or Jesus; and on the pavement of those temples, men will be seen kneeling, prostrated, annihilated in the thought of the Infinite.”

At that time, when triumphant Positivism was inspiring many leaders of men, the very man who might have given himself up to what he called “the enchantment of Science” proclaimed the Mystery of the universe; with his intellectual humility, Pasteur bowed before a Power greater than human power. He continued with the following words, worthy of being preserved for ever, for they are of those which pass over humanity like a Divine breath: “Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and who obeys it; ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions; they all reflect light from the Infinite.”

Pasteur concluded by a supreme homage to Littré. “Often have I fancied him seated by his wife, as in a picture of early Christian times: he, looking down upon earth, full of compassion for human suffering; she, a fervent Catholic, her eyes raised to heaven: he, inspired by all earthly virtues; she, by every Divine grandeur; uniting in one impulse and in one heart the twofold holiness which forms the aureole of the Man-God, the one proceeding from devotion to humanity, the other emanating from ardent love for the Divinity: she a saint in the canonic sense of the word, he a lay-saint. This last word is not mine; I have gathered it on the lips of all those that knew him.”