“But when, after so many efforts, you have at last arrived at a certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human soul, and the thought that you will have contributed to the honour of your country renders that joy still deeper.
“If science has no country, the scientist should have one, and ascribe to it the influence which his works may have in this world. If I might be allowed, M. le Président, to conclude by a philosophical remark inspired by your presence in this Home of Work, I should say that two contrary laws seem to be wrestling with each other nowadays; the one, a law of blood and of death, ever imagining new means of destruction and forcing nations to be constantly ready for the battlefield—the other, a law of peace, work and health, ever evolving new means of delivering man from the scourges which beset him.
“The one seeks violent conquests, the other the relief of humanity. The latter places one human life above any victory; while the former would sacrifice hundreds and thousands of lives to the ambition of one. The law of which we are the instruments seeks, even in the midst of carnage, to cure the sanguinary ills of the law of war; the treatment inspired by our antiseptic methods may preserve thousands of soldiers. Which of those two laws will ultimately prevail, God alone knows. But we may assert that French Science will have tried, by obeying the law of Humanity, to extend the frontiers of Life.”
CHAPTER XIV
1889—1895
In this Institute, which Pasteur entered ill and weary, he contemplated with joy those large laboratories, which would enable his pupils to work with ease and to attract around them investigators from all countries. He was happy to think that the material difficulties which had hampered him would be spared those who came after him. He believed in the realization of his wishes for peace, work, mutual help among men. Whatever the obstacles, he was persuaded that science would continue its civilizing progress and that its benefits would spread from domain to domain. Differing from those old men who are ever praising the past, he had an enthusiastic confidence in the future; he foresaw great developments of his studies, some of which were already apparent. His first researches on crystallography and molecular dissymmetry had served as a basis to stereo-chemistry. But, while he followed the studies on that subject of Le Bel and Van t’Hoff, he continued to regret that he had not been able to revert to the studies of his youth, enslaved as he had been by the inflexible logical sequence of his works. “Every time we have had the privilege of hearing Pasteur speak of his early researches,” writes M. Chamberland, in an article in the Revue Scientifique, “we have seen the revival in him of a smouldering fire, and we have thought that his countenance showed a vague regret at having forsaken them. Who can now say what discoveries he might have made in that direction?” “One day,” said Dr. Héricourt—who spent the summer near Villeneuve l’Etang, and who often came into the Park with his two sons—“he favoured me with an admirable, captivating discourse on this subject, the like of which I have never heard.”
Pasteur, instead of feeling regret, might have looked back with calm pride on the progress he had made in other directions.
In what obscurity were fermentation and infection enveloped before his time, and with what light he had penetrated them! When he had discovered the all-powerful rôle of the infinitesimally small, he had actually mastered some of those living germs, causes of disease; he had transformed them from destructive to preservative agents. Not only had he renovated medicine and surgery, but hygiene, misunderstood and neglected until then, was benefiting by the experimental method. Light was being thrown on preventive measures.
M. Henri Monod, Director of Hygiene and Public Charities, one day quoted, à propos of sanitary measures, these words of the great English Minister, Disraeli—
“Public health is the foundation upon which rest the happiness of the people and the power of the State. Take the most beautiful kingdom, give it intelligent and laborious citizens, prosperous manufactures, productive agriculture; let arts flourish, let architects cover the land with temples and palaces; in order to defend all these riches, have first-rate weapons, fleets of torpedo boats—if the population remains stationary, if it decreases yearly in vigour and in stature, the nation must perish. And that is why I consider that the first duty of a statesman is the care of Public Health.”
In 1889, when the International Congress of Hygiene met in Paris, M. Brouardel was able to say—