“It is not by their form that these two lectures have delighted my hearers, it is by their contents; it is the future reserved to those great results, so unexpected, and opening such entirely new vistas to physiology. I have dared to say so, for at these heights all sense of personality disappears, and there only remains that sense of dignity which is ever inspired by true love of science.
“God grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably failed.
“P.S.--Yesterday I presented to the Academy my researches on spontaneous generation; they seemed to produce a great sensation. More later.”
When Biot heard that Pasteur wished to tackle this study of spontaneous generation, he interposed, as he had done seven years before, to arrest him on the verge of his audacious experiments on the part played by dissymmetrical forces in the development of life. Vainly Pasteur, grieved at Biot’s disapprobation, explained that this question, in the course of such researches, had become an imperious necessity; Biot would not be convinced. But Pasteur, in spite of his quasi-filial attachment to Biot, could not stop where he was; he had to go through to the end.
“You will never find your way out,” cried Biot.
Angry and anxious, Biot wished Pasteur to promise that he would relinquish these apparently hopeless researches. J. B. Dumas, to whom Pasteur related the more than discouraging remonstrances of Biot, entrenched himself behind this cautious phrase--
“I would advise no one to dwell too long on such a subject.”
Senarmont alone, full of confidence in the ingenious curiosity of the man who could read nature by dint of patience, said that Pasteur should be allowed his own way.
It is regrettable that Biot--whose passion for reading was so indefatigable that he complained of not finding enough books in the library at the Institute--should not have thought of writing the history of this question of spontaneous generation. He could have gone back to Aristotle, quoted Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Pliny. Philosophers, poets, naturalists, all believed in spontaneous generation. Time went on, and it was still believed in. In the sixteenth century, Van Helmont--who should not be judged by that one instance--gave a celebrated recipe to create mice: any one could work that prodigy by putting some dirty linen in a receptacle, together with a few grains of wheat or a piece of cheese. Some time later an Italian, Buonanni, announced a fact no less fantastic: certain timberwood, he said, after rotting in the sea, produced worms which engendered butterflies, and those butterflies became birds.