The life of Pasteur

by René Vallery-Radot

Whilst Pasteur thus felt those simple and strong impressions as a soldier or the man in the street might do, the creative power of his nature was urging him to great and useful achievements. He wrote from Lyons in March to M. Duclaux—

“My head is full of splendid projects; the war sent my brain to grass, but I now feel ready for further work. Perhaps I am deluding myself; anyhow I will try.... Oh! why am I not rich, a millionaire? I would say to you, to Raulin, to Gernez, to Van Tieghem, etc., come, we will transform the world by our discoveries. How fortunate you are to be young and strong! Why can I not begin a new life of study and work! Unhappy France, beloved country, if I could only assist in raising thee from thy disasters!”

A few days later, in a letter to Raulin, this desire for devoted work was again expressed almost feverishly. He could foresee, in the dim distance, secret affinities between apparently dissimilar things. He had at that time returned to the researches which had absorbed his youth (because those studies were less materially difficult to organize), and he could perceive laws and connections between the facts he had observed and those of the existence of which he felt assured.

“I have begun here some experiments in crystallization which will open a great prospect if they should lead to positive results. You know that I believe that there is a cosmic dissymmetric influence which presides constantly and naturally over the molecular organization of principles immediately essential to life; and that, in consequence of this, the species of the three kingdoms, by their structure, by their form, by the disposition of their tissues, have a definite relation to the movements of the universe. For many of those species, if not for all, the sun is the primum movens of nutrition; but I believe in another influence which would affect the whole organization, for it would be the cause of the molecular dissymmetry proper to the chemical components of life. I want to be able by experiment to grasp a few indications as to the nature of this great cosmic dissymmetrical influence. It must, it may be electricity, magnetism.... And, as one should always proceed from the simple to the complex, I am now trying to crystallize double racemate of soda and ammonia under the influence of a spiral solenoid.

“I have various other forms of experiment to attempt. If one of them should succeed, we shall have work for the rest of our lives, and in one of the greatest subjects man could approach, for I should not despair of arriving by this means at a very deep, unexpected and extraordinary modification of the animal and vegetable species.

“Good-bye, my dear Raulin. Let us endeavour to distract our thoughts from human turpitudes by the disinterested search after truth.”

In a little notebook where he jotted down some intended experiments we find evidence of those glimpses of divination in a few summary lines: “Show that life is in the germ, that it has been but in a state of transmission since the origin of creation. That the germ possesses possibilities of development, either of intelligence and will, or—and in the same way—of physical organs. Compare these possibilities with those possessed by the germ of chemical species which is in the chemical molecule. The possibilities of development in the germ of the chemical molecule consist in crystallization, in its form, in its physical and chemical properties. Those properties are in power in the germ of the molecule in the same way as the organs and tissues of animals and plants are in their respective germs. Add: nothing is more curious than to carry the comparison of living species with mineral species into the study of the wounds of either, and of their healing by means of nutrition—a nutrition coming from within in living beings, and from without through the medium of crystallization in the others. Here detail facts....”

In that same notebook, Pasteur, after writing down the following heading, “Letter to prepare on the species in connection with molecular dissymmetry,” added, “I could write that letter to Bernard. I should say that being deprived of a laboratory by the present state of France, I am going to give him the preconceived ideas that I shall try to experiment upon when better times come. There is no peril in expressing ideas a priori, when they are taken as such, and can be gradually modified, perhaps even completely transformed, according to the result of the observation of facts.”

He once compared those preconceived ideas with searchlights guiding the experimentalist, saying that they only became dangerous when they became fixed ideas.

Civil war had now come, showing, as Renan said, “a sore under the sore, an abyss below the abyss.” What were the hopes and projects of Pasteur and of Sainte Claire Deville now that the very existence of the divided country was jeopardized under the eyes of the Prussians? The world of letters and of science, helpless amidst such disorders, had dispersed; Saint Claire Deville was at Gex, Dumas at Geneva. Some were wondering whether lectures could not be organized in Switzerland and in Belgium as they had been under the Empire, thus spreading abroad the influence of French thought. Examples might be quoted of men who had served the glory of their country in other lands, such as Descartes, who took refuge in Holland in order to continue his philosophic meditations. Pasteur might have been tempted to do likewise. Already, before the end of the war, an Italian professor of chemistry, Signor Chiozza, who had applied Pasteur’s methods to silkworms in the neighbourhood of Villa Vicentina, got the Italian Government to offer him a laboratory and the direction of a silkworm establishment. Pasteur refused, and a deputy of Pisa, Signor Toscanelli, hearing of this, obtained for Pasteur the offer of what was better still—a professor’s chair of Chemistry applied to Agriculture at Pisa; this would give every facility for work and all laboratory resources. “Pisa,” Signor Chiozza said, “is a quiet town, a sort of Latin quarter in the middle of the country, where professors and students form the greater part of the population. I think you would be received with the greatest cordiality and quite exceptional consideration ... I fear that black days of prolonged agitation are in store for France.”