Page 27 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
24
there of Dean of the Free Faculty of Medicine. Some
wise friends advised him not to leave Montpellier; but, on
the other side, he was bombarded with entreaties to take
up work at Lille. Finally, and entirely from patriotic
^motives, he allowed himself to be persuaded to leave his
clear University of Montpellier, teeming with happy
memories of successful work. His altruistic wish to benefit
at one and the same time France and science brought
about his acquiescence in the change. He moved to the
North with his son Joseph, the latter having been ap-
pointed Professor of Toxicology at Lille.
All might have gone well had it not been for the clerical
Directors of the house of learning, whose want of faith was
well advertised by their intellectual timidity. Like all who
fence in belief with dogma—and religious priesthoods are
by no means the only builders of such enclosures—the
anxious ecclesiastics were determined to set boundaries to
science and keep thought within barriers. The inevitable
result was continual friction between the clerical Directors
and the lay Professors of the University.
Unfortunately, IJechamp entered this unpropitious
atmosphere just at the moment when he was putting the
finishing touches to his exposition of the microzymas, that
is, the infinitesimal cellular granules, now known as
microsomes, which he considered to be the formative
agents ofthe cells which compose all animal and vegetable
This stupendous conception of the processes of
forms £
Creation at once raised a note of protest from the narrow-
minded clerics. Here was a man who dared to profess to
describe Nature's methods, instead of complacently
resigning them to mystery.
Pasteur seems never to have fallen foul of the ecclesi-
astics; partly, perhaps, because he did not come into the
same close contact; but more probably because, with his
worldly wisdom, he was content to profess leadership in
science and discipleship in religion; besides, had he not
also gained the patronage of the great? Bechamp's deep
insight had taught him the connection between science