And the last great lesson is humility before the unsolved problems of the Universe. Any convictions that might be a comfort in the sufferings of human life had his respectful sympathy. His own creed was beautifully expressed in his eulogy upon _Littré_:--“He who proclaims the existence of the Infinite, and none can avoid it--accumulates in that affirmation more of the supernatural than is to be found in all the miracles of all the religions; for the notion of the Infinite presents that double character that it forces itself upon us and yet is incomprehensible. When this notion seizes upon our understanding, we can but kneel.... I see everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world; through it, the supernatural is at the bottom of every heart. The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of the Infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah, or Jesus; and on the pavement of those temples, men will be seen kneeling, prostrated, annihilated in the thought of the Infinite.” And modern Pantheism has never had a greater disciple, whose life and work set forth the devotion to an ideal--that service to humanity is service to God:--“Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and who obeys it: ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions; they all reflect light from the Infinite.”
The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances. In her new mission to humanity she preaches a new gospel. In the nineteenth century renaissance she has had great apostles, Darwin, for example, whose gifts of heart and head were in equal measure, but after re-reading for the third or fourth time the _Life of Louis Pasteur_, I am of the opinion, expressed recently by the anonymous writer of a beautiful tribute in the _Spectator_, “that he was the most perfect man who has ever entered the Kingdom of Science.”
Introduction by Sir William Osler, Bart., M.D., F.R.S., v.
Origin of the Pasteur Family, 1--Jean Joseph Pasteur, a Conscript in 1811; Sergeant-major in the 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3; a Knight of the Legion of Honour, 4; his Marriage, 5; the Tannery at Dôle, 6--Birth of Louis Pasteur, his Childhood and Youth, 6. Studies in Arbois College, 7. Departure for Paris, 11. Arrival in Paris, 11; the Barbet Boarding School, Home Sickness, 11. Return to Jura, Pasteur a Portrait Painter, 12; enters Besançon Royal College, 13; a Bachelier ès Lettres, a Preparation Master, 14; his Readings, 15. Friendship with Chappuis, 18; a Bachelier ès Sciences, 20; Pasteur admitted to the Ecole Normale, 22; Sorbonne Lectures, Impression produced by J. B. Dumas, 21.