Louis Pasteur

22 LOUIS PASTEUR
from the young thoughtful schoolboy, through the stem profes-
sor and eager experimenter of early adulthood, the passionate
fighter and apostle of maturity, to the tired warrior in his old age.
dreaming
[ Secause Pasteur touched on so many problems and influenced
so many lives during his tempestuous career, the different aspects
of his
personality are reflected as by a multifaceted mirror
in the reaction to his performance of men at all levels of society
and in all walks of life. There are many records of the admira-
tion of his colleagues for his scientific discoveries, but also of
impatience for his intolerence and overbearing attitude when he
knew or believed that truth was on his side. Other philosophers
and scientists shared his faith that the exact sciences constitutedoutside
of revealed religion the only avenue to wisdom
and to power open to man; but there were also those who
sneered at that naive philosophy, certain as they were that nature
and truth would not be conquered by such primitive means.
Countless human beings have worshiped him as the savior of
their children or of their humble trades; but he had also to face
the opposition of those who questioned the practical value of his
discoveries sometimes on the basis of healthy and informed
criticism, too often because man is blind and deaf to the new,
or resents any changes to the old order of things.
Soon, however, worship triumphed over criticism; legend captured
Pasteur from history. France took him as the symbol of
her genius for logic and of her romantic impulses. His name now
calls forth in French hearts poetical and haunting associations:
the small towns of D61e and Arbois where he was born and
raised, along graceful rivers called the Doubs and the Cuisance;
Paris its great schools, the atmosphere of meditative scholar-
ship and of feverish participation in the affairs of the world; a
revered old man, exhausted by years of endless toil in the service
of humanity, recalling under the huge trees of the park of Saint-
Cloud the dreams of the idealistic student who fifty years
earlier had planned to consecrate himself to the solution of
some of the eternal problems of life. Across half a century, his