He had already secured a notable place in science when the public learned his name through the memorable contest between him and Pouchet over "spontaneous generation." The probabilities of the case were on Pouchet's side. People refused to believe that these organisms which developed in great numbers in an enclosed jar or that the molds which developed under certain conditions were not produced spontaneously. The youth of the time went wild over the question. I was constantly being asked, "Are you for Pouchet or Pasteur?" and my invariable response was, "I shall be for the one who proves he is right." I was unwilling to admit that any such question could be solved _a priori_ in accordance with preconceived ideas, although I must confess that among my friends I found no one of the same opinion. We know how Pasteur won a striking victory through his patience and his genius. He demonstrated that millions and millions of germs are present in the air about us and that when one of them finds favorable conditions, a living being appears which engenders others. "Many are called, but few are chosen." This law may seem unjust, but it is one of the great laws of Nature. Pasteur, the great benefactor, whose discoveries did so much for all classes of society, should have been popular, but he was, on the contrary, extremely unpopular. The leading publicists of the day were influenced by some inexplicable sentiment and they made constant war on him. When, after several years of prodigious labor, Pasteur ventured to assert himself, they took advantage of his following the dictates of humanity in accepting all sorts of cases, curable or not, to spread a report that his treatment did not cure, but instead gave the disease which it was supposed to cure. Popular fury was aroused to such a height, that a monster mass meeting was held _against_ Pasteur. Louise Michel addressed this meeting with her customary vigor of speech and amidst frantic applause shouted this unqualified remark, "_Scientific questions should be settled by the people._" By this time everybody was talking about microbes, and a shop on the boulevards announced an exhibition of them. They used what is known as a solar microscope and threw on a screen, suitably enlarged, the animalculae which grow in impure water, the larvae of mosquitoes, and other insects, which bear about the same relation to microbes that an elephant does to a flea. I went into this establishment, and saw the plain people with their wives looking at the exhibition very seriously and really believing that they saw the famous microbes. One of them near me said, with a knowing air, "What won't science do next?" I was indignant, and I had all I could do to keep from saying: "They are fooling you. What they are showing you is not Science, at the most only its antechamber. As for you who are deceiving these naive good people, you are only impostors."