The life of Pasteur

by René Vallery-Radot

Sainte Beuve, whilst studying medicine, had been a Positivist; his quick and impressionable nature had then turned to a mysticism which had inspired him to pen some fine verses. He had now returned to his former philosophy, but kept an open mind, however, criticism being for him not the art of dictating, but of understanding, and he was absolutely averse to irrelevant considerations when a candidature was in question.

The best means with Pasteur, who was no diplomat, was to go straight to the point. Sainte Beuve therefore wrote to him: “Dear Sir, will you allow me to be indiscreet enough to solicit your influence in favour of M. Robin, whose work I know you appreciate?

“M. Robin does not perhaps belong to the same philosophical school as you do; but it seems to me—from an outsider’s point of view—that he belongs to the same scientific school. If he should differ essentially—whether in metaphysics or otherwise—would it not be worthy of a great scientist to take none but positive work into account? Nothing more, nothing less.

“Forgive me; I have much resented the injustice towards you of certain newspapers, and I have sometimes asked myself if there were not some simple means of showing up all that nonsense, and of disproving those absurd and ill-intentioned statements. If M. Robin deserves to be of the Académie why should he not attain to it through you?...

“My sense of gratitude towards you for those four years during which you have done me the honour of including such a man as you are in my audience, also a feeling of friendship, are carrying me too far. I intended to mention this to you the other day at the Princess’s; she had wished me to do so, but I feel bolder with a pen....”

The Princess in question was Princess Mathilde. Her salon, a rendezvous of men of letters, men of science and artists, was a sort of second Academy which consoled Théophile Gautier for not belonging to the other. Sainte Beuve prided himself on being, so to speak, honorary secretary to this accomplished and charming hostess.

Pasteur answered by return of post. “Sir and illustrious colleague, I feel strongly inclined towards M. Robin, who would represent a new scientific element at the Academy—the microscope applied to the study of the human organism. I do not trouble about his philosophical school save for the harm it may do to his work.... I confess frankly, however, that I am not competent on the question of our philosophical schools. Of M. Comte I have only read a few absurd passages; of M. Littré I only know the beautiful pages you were inspired to write by his rare knowledge and some of his domestic virtues. My philosophy is of the heart and not of the mind, and I give myself up, for instance, to those feelings about eternity which come naturally at the bedside of a cherished child drawing its last breath. At those supreme moments, there is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world may be more than a mere combination of phenomena proper to a mechanical equilibrium brought out of the chaos of the elements simply through the gradual action of the forces of matter. I admire them all, our philosophers! We have experiments to straighten and modify our ideas, and we constantly find that nature is other than we had imagined. They, who are always guessing, how can they know!...”

Sainte Beuve was probably not astonished at Pasteur’s somewhat hasty epithet applied to Auguste Comte, whom he had himself defined as “an obscure, abstruse, often diseased brain.” After Robin’s election he wrote to his “dear and learned colleague”—

“I have not allowed myself to thank you for the letter, so beautiful, if I may say so, so deep and so exalted in thought, which you did me the honour of writing in answer to mine. Nothing now forbids me to tell you how deeply I am struck with your way of thinking and with your action in this scientific matter.”

That “something in the depths of our souls” of which Pasteur spoke in his letter to Sainte Beuve, was often perceived in his conversation; absorbed as he was in his daily task, he yet carried in himself a constant aspiration towards the Ideal, a deep conviction of the reality of the Infinite and a trustful acquiescence in the Mystery of the universe.