Going on to the most recently acquired results, M. Grancher stated that the mortality amongst persons treated after bites from rabid dogs remained under 1 per 100.
“If those figures are indeed eloquent,” said M. Christophle, the treasurer, who spoke after M. Grancher, “other figures are touching. I would advise those who only see the dark side of humanity,” he remarked, before entering upon the statement of accounts—“those who go about repeating that everything here below is for the worst, that there is no disinterestedness, no devotion in this world—to cast their eyes over the ‘human documents’ of the Pasteur Institute. They would learn therein, beginning at the beginning, that Academies contain colleagues who are not offended, but proud and happy in the fame of another; that politicians and journalists often have a passion for what is good and true; that at no former epoch have great men been more beloved in France; that justice is already rendered to them during their lifetime, which is very much the best way of doing so; that we have cheered Victor Hugo’s birthday, Chevreul’s centenary, and the inauguration of the Pasteur Institute. When a Frenchman runs himself down, said one of M. Pasteur’s colleagues, do not believe him; he is boasting! Reversing a celebrated and pessimistic phrase, it might be said that in this public subscription all the virtues flow into unselfishness like rivers into the sea.”
M. Christophle went on to show how rich and poor had joined in this subscription and raised an amount of 2,586,680 fr. The French Chambers had voted 200,000 fr., to which had been added international gifts from the Tsar, the Emperor of Brazil, and the Sultan. The total expenses would probably reach 1,563,786 fr., leaving a little more than a million to form an endowment for the Pasteur Institute, a fund which was to be increased every year by the product of the sale of vaccines from the laboratory, which Pasteur and Messrs. Chamberland and Roux agreed to give up to the Institute.
“It is thus, Sir,” concluded the treasurer, directly addressing Pasteur, “that public generosity, practical help from the Government, and your own disinterestedness have founded and consolidated the establishment which we are to-day inaugurating.” And, persuaded that the solicitude of the public would never fail to support this great work, “This is for you, Sir, a rare and almost unhoped for happiness; let it console you for the passionate struggles, the terrible anxiety and the many emotions you have gone through.”
Pasteur, overcome by his feelings, had to ask his son to read his speech. It began by a rapid summary of what France had done for education in all its degrees. “From village schools to laboratories, everything has been founded or renovated.” After acknowledging the help given him in later years by the public authorities, he continued—
“And when the day came that, foreseeing the future which would be opened by the discovery of the attenuation of virus, I appealed to my country, so that we should be allowed, through the strength and impulse of private initiative, to build laboratories to be devoted, not only to the prophylactic treatment of hydrophobia, but also to the study of virulent and contagious diseases—on that day again, France gave in handfuls.... It is now finished, this great building, of which it might be said that there is not a stone but what is the material sign of a generous thought. All the virtues have subscribed to build this dwelling place for work.
“Alas! mine is the bitter grief that I enter it, a man ‘vanquished by Time,’ deprived of my masters, even of my companions in the struggle, Dumas, Bouley, Paul Bert, and lastly Vulpian, who, after having been with you, my dear Grancher, my counsellor at the very first, became the most energetic, the most convinced champion of this method.
“However, if I have the sorrow of thinking that they are no more, after having valiantly taken their part in discussions which I have never provoked but have had to endure; if they cannot hear me proclaim all that I owe to their counsels and support; if I feel their absence as deeply as on the morrow of their death, I have at least the consolation of believing that all that we struggled for together will not perish. The collaborators and pupils who are now here share our scientific faith....” He continued, as in a sort of testament: “Keep your early enthusiasm, dear collaborators, but let it ever be regulated by rigorous examinations and tests. Never advance anything which cannot be proved in a simple and decisive fashion.
“Worship the spirit of criticism. If reduced to itself, it is not an awakener of ideas or a stimulant to great things, but, without it, everything is fallible; it always has the last word. What I am now asking you, and you will ask of your pupils later on, is what is most difficult to an inventor.
“It is indeed a hard task, when you believe you have found an important scientific fact and are feverishly anxious to publish it, to constrain yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, to fight with yourself, to try and ruin your own experiments and only to proclaim your discovery after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses.