Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And TriumphsFuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
History
Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs
Fuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
Biography
M. Paul Best, who was M. Pasteur's early rival in scientific discussion,
paid a generous tribute to his great ability and services, and declared
that the discovery of the prevention of anthrax was the grandest and
most fruitful of all French discoveries. M. Pasteur's native town, Dole,
on the day of the national _fete_ last year (1883), placed a
commemorative tablet on the house in which he was born. The government's
grant of a pension of $5,000 a year, to be continued to his widow and
children, was made on the knowledge that if M. Pasteur had retained
proprietary right in his discovery, he might have amassed a vast
fortune; but he had freely given all to the public. According to an
estimate made by Professor Huxley, the labors of M. Pasteur are equal in
money value alone to the _one thousand millions of dollars_ of indemnity
paid by France to Germany in the late war. It is also to be remembered
that M. Pasteur's labors imparted stimulus to discovery in many
directions, setting many discoverers at work, who are now experimenting
on the working hypothesis of the parasitic origin of all other
infectious diseases.
Now here are three men, to whom the world is probably more indebted than
to any other twenty men who have lived this century; indebted for
health, wealth, comfort, and enjoyment; indebted in kitchen, chamber,
drawing-room, counting-house; at home and abroad, by day and by night,
for gratification of the bodily and aesthetic taste. They were the
almoners of science. Practical men would have no tools to work with if
they did not receive them from those who, in abstraction, wrought in the
secluded heights of scientific investigation. It is base to be
ungrateful to the studious recluses who are the devotees of science.
These three men were Christians--simple, honest, devout Christians.
Faraday was a most "just and faithful knight of God," as Professor
Tyndall says. Sir William Siemens, it is said, was a useful elder in the
Presbyterian Church, and M. Pasteur, still living, is a reverent Roman
Catholic. Surely, when we find these men walking a lofty height of
science, higher than that occupied by any of their contemporaries, and
when we find these men sending down more enriching gifts to the lowly
sons of toil, and all the traders in the market places, and all seekers
of pleasure in the world, than any other scientific men, we must be safe
in the conclusion that to be an earnest Christian is not incompatible
with the highest attainments in science; and we can not find fault with
those who look with contempt upon the men who disdain Christianity, as
if it were beneath them, when it is remembered that among the rejecters
of our holy faith are no men to whom we have a right to be grateful for
any discovery that has added a dollar to the world's exchequer, or a
"ray to the brightness of the world's civilization."--DR. DEEMS, _in the
New York Independent_.
* * * * *
XXII.
MY UNCLE TOBY
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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