The life of Pasteur

by René Vallery-Radot

And yet Joly had written to the Académie, “If one only of our flasks remains pure, we will loyally own our defeat.” A scientist who later became Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences, Jamin, wrote about this conflict: “The heterogenists, however they may have coloured their retreat, have condemned themselves. If they had been sure of the fact—which they had solemnly engaged to prove or to own themselves vanquished,—they would have insisted on showing it, it would have been the triumph of their doctrine.”

The heterogenists appealed to the public. A few days after their defeat, Joly gave a lecture at the Faculty of Medicine. He called the trial, as decided on by the Commission, a “circus competition”; he was applauded by those who saw other than scientific questions in the matter. The problem was now coming down from mountains and laboratories into the arena of society discussions. If all comes from a germ, people said, whence came the first germ? We must bow before that mystery, said Pasteur; it is the question of the origin of all things, and absolutely outside the domain of scientific research. But an invincible curiosity exists amongst most men which cannot admit that science should have the wisdom to content itself with the vast space between the beginning of the world and the unknown future. Many people transform a question of fact into a question of faith. Though Pasteur had brought into his researches a solely scientific preoccupation, many people approved or blamed him as the defender of a religious cause.

Vainly had he said, “There is here no question of religion, philosophy, atheism, materialism, or spiritualism. I might even add that they do not matter to me as a scientist. It is a question of fact; when I took it up I was as ready to be convinced by experiments that spontaneous generation exists as I am now persuaded that those who believe it are blindfolded.”

It might have been thought that Pasteur’s arguments were in support of a philosophical theory! It seemed impossible to those whose ideas came from an ardent faith, from the influence of their surroundings, from personal pride or from interested calculations to understand that a man should seek truth for its own sake and with no other object than to proclaim it. Hostilities were opened, journalists kept up the fire. A priest, the Abbé Moigno spoke of converting unbelievers through the proved non-existence of spontaneous generation. The celebrated novelist, Edmond About, took up Pouchet’s cause with sparkling irony. “M. Pasteur preached at the Sorbonne amidst a concert of applause which must have gladdened the angels.”

Thus, among the papers and reviews of that time we can follow the divers ideas brought out by these discussions. Guizot, then almost eighty, touched on this problem with the slightly haughty assurance of one conscious of having given much thought to his beliefs and destiny. “Man has not been formed through spontaneous generation, that is by a creative and organizing force inherent in matter; scientific observation daily overturns that theory, by which, moreover, it is impossible to explain the first appearance upon the earth of man in his complete state.” And he praised “M. Pasteur, who has brought into this question the light of his scrupulous criticism.”

Nisard was a wondering witness of what took place in the small laboratory of the Ecole Normale. Ever preoccupied by the relations between science and religion, he heard with some surprise Pasteur saying modestly, “Researches on primary causes are not in the domain of Science, which only recognizes facts and phenomena which it can demonstrate.”

Pasteur did not disinterest himself from the great problems which he called the eternal subjects of men’s solitary meditations. But he did not admit the interference of religion with science any more than that of science with religion.

His eagerness during a conflict was only equalled by his absolute forgetfulness after the conflict was over. He answered some one who, years later, reminded him of that past so full of attacks and praises. “A man of science should think of what will be said of him in the following century, not of the insults or the compliments of one day.”

Pasteur, anxious to regain lost time, hurried to return to his studies on wine. “Might not the diseases of wines,” he said at the Académie des Sciences in January, 1864, “be caused by organized ferments, microscopic vegetations, of which the germs would develop when certain circumstances of temperature, of atmospheric variations, of exposure to air, would favour their evolution or their introduction into wines?... I have indeed reached this result that the alterations of wines are co-existent with the presence and multiplication of microscopic vegetations.” Acid wines, bitter wines, “ropy” wines, sour wines, he had studied them all with a microscope, his surest guide in recognizing the existence and form of the evil.

As he had more particularly endeavoured to remedy the cause of the acidity which often ruins the Jura red or white wines in the wood, the town of Arbois, proud of its celebrated rosy and tawny wines, placed an impromptu laboratory at his disposal during the holidays of 1864; the expenses were all to be covered by the town. “This spontaneous offer from a town dear to me for so many reasons,” answered Pasteur to the Mayor and Town Council, “does too much honour to my modest labours, and the way in which it is made covers me with confusion.” He refused it however, fearing that the services he might render should not be proportionate to the generosity of the Council. He preferred to camp out with his curators in an old coffee room at the entrance of the town, and they contented themselves with apparatus of the most primitive description, generally made by some local tinker or shoeing smith.